Loadeye879

As usual, I cannot be responsible for any damage to your machines when you will experiment the following tutorial.

So the keyboard is dirty!

And as it is transparent , the dirtiness is well visible.

(Note: I would like Apple discovers that it is possible to produce beautifull stuff which don't be covered by mud after a few years of use...

... for instance bad examples are iBook/IPod covers).

1)

Front view...

2)

... rear view... well, after being disconnected from the Mac of course :-).

Yellow arrows show the screws to be removed. They are 'Allen' screws of 1,3 mm (stupid lenght isn'it ? ).

The blue arrows point to spots which betray the presence of screws... on the other side.

The blue middle one indicates a screw under the 'M' key!

The white arrow points to a hole in the sticker which allow to reach the screw which locks the metallic protection of the keyboard logic board.

3)

Dirty stuff.

4)

There are 3 screws which fix the keyboard onto its support.
One under the '6'.

5)

One under the caps lock (yellow arrow)

The blue arrow shows the caps-lock led: do not loose it!

The last one, as stated earlier, under the 'M'.

But up to now there is no need to remove them: we will do this later.

We only remove the keys and disjoin the two keyboard's parts. To do this, I use a tool you can find, for example, here.

-> we remove the keys by carefully lift them up.

6)

Very dirty :-(

7)

The keys themselves are also dirty! So a deep clean is required.

I use makeup removal cotton with ispropyllic alcohol.

8)

First, as in the V.I.R.U.S. method, I remove all the keys.

-> dust.

9)

The nude keyboard. Warning, big keys (space bar,...) are locked by a metallic bar: so be carefull when manipulating them.

10)

Paintbrush to remove the biggest dusts.

11)

And now... yes... dismounting all the keyboard.

The screew under the sticker, near the USB cable.

12)

The now famous 'Allen 1,3 mm' screws... The longest one on the USB connector side.

I remove them with this.

13)

The shortest one on the keyboard side.

14)

Same on the opposite edge: yellow arrows shows the long screw, the blue arrow the short one.

15)

Then next, I carefully dissamble the keyboard with a lever I introduce at the clips level (yellow arrow points to where I will put this lever)

On the left, the little horizontal line which allows the two elements to be jointed.

16)

I do it smoothly to avoid breaking the stuff.

The operation is very delicate on the front face: I have to carefully use the lever near the clips region.

17)

Once the upper part of the keyboard unhooked, two cruciform screws lock the USB cable (yellow arrows).

The blue one points in the hole 'under the sticker' (see above) where a screw was.

18)

The unhooked USB cable, the yellow arrow shows the screw 'under the M'.

We also see dusts which has not been removed by the paintbrush's action.

19)

The removed upper cover.

20)

The under cover removed after that the 3 screws (under caps-lock, under the 'M' and under the '6') have been unscrewed and the keyboard itself extracted.

21)

So we can deeply clean it (cotton + isopropyllic alcohol): do not forget the slots...

22)

... and the spots which had resisted to the paintbrush.

Before...

23)

After :-)

24)

One can go a step forward: dissamble the electronic board and clean it.

I will do not show this operation here.

Just go to my 'How to save a keyboard after a grape juice attack' page here!

-> as usual, follow the instruction in a reverse order to rebuild the keyboard.

If you wish to thank or forsten me...