What do all theaters and the desert have in common?  Dust.  It is one of the natural predators of consoles, and it’s thoroughly annoying.  Recently, I had two buttons (Data and Tab) that would often refuse to post and one (Stop/Back) that would get pressed- and keep pressing.  The first two only frustrate me.  The Stop button makes everyone (especially my Gaffer) upset.  I gave the console what I thought was a thorough cleaning- pulling everything apart, using compressed air to blow out dust, using q-tips and rubbing alcohol to clean out crevices.  Though it helped, it didn’t help very much with the Tab and Data buttons.

Why?  Well, they are a very different kind of button with a housing that is far more closed than a traditional Cherry key.  Just when I thought I was going to have to replace the entire PCB board (expensive- over $1000), ETC Tech Support did what they are famous for- gave me great sadvice.  The answer?  More rubbing alcohol.

The idea is to get some of the rubbing alcohol down into the switch to free up the dust that has ground down in there.  So I again dismantled the whole console, pulled out the PSB board, but this time I changed my technique a bit.  First- I found these really cool cotton swabs on Amazon that are TAPERED.  Link HERE. Super cool.  They absorb quite a bit of alcohol and since they come to a finer point, it makes it easy to pool some of the rubbing alcohol on the tiny surface that surrounds the post of the button.  Pool some alcohol on one part of the post and press it many, many times.  Now, do it at an angle, tipping the post away from where you are pooling the alcohol.  Repeat as you tilt the post in many directions.

Not sure if it will solve all your problems, but it sure worked perfectly for me.  What maintenance tricks have you picked up for your console?  Would love to hear tips in the comments.