Originally Posted by
momule
Just to see what would happen I took an old keyboard out of service and stuck it in the dishwasher. No soap and no ultra heated water. I let it air dry for several days, plugged it in and it was not only clean as new but it worked like a champ. Most all of them have a plastic membrane separating the keys from the microswitches inside. There isn't much to them.
One of the tasks of whoever worked in my college's computer labs over the breaks was to take the keyboards to the dining hall, and run them through the dish machine. Did a wonderful job getting rid of all the nasty stuff that college students did to computer keyboards. Wasn't even that long a drying period, because of the very hot water used in the machine. Most electronics deal with water just fine, as long as they're not powered on when wet. (Washing with water based solvents is a pretty common step in the manufacturing process.) With modern things, like cell phones, its much easier to say that than it is to do it, because of backup batteries and so on. If you've got access to a vacuum oven (and who doesn't, really?), that can greatly speed the drying process. Failing that, somewhere warm and dry works nicely (tops of refridgerators and water heaters work well).