Can You Clean A Malfunctioning Keypad PCB Or Will This Ruin The Board?
Can You Clean A Malfunctioning Keypad PCB – We have a malfunctioning keypad in an older system – seems like it got wet. The keypad is now jumping between modes and armed and disarmed states and constantly beeping. Not sure if it’s the keypad or the controller causing the issue, to be honest. Is it possible to clean a PCB and what are the chances we will damage it?
A: It is possible to clean a PCB and yes, there’s a chance you will damage it. It’s always hard when you’re dealing with a head unit that’s behaving erratically. Are the issues you’re seeing at the keypad emergent properties of damage to board connections, or do they relate to controller connections, or firmware bugs?
The manufacturer’s engineers could likely diagnose this, but the real question is whether it’s worth risking cleaning the board or not. If the system is decades old you would likely be best to retain the wiring and replace keypad and controller with something newer and more capable. If you’re at the point of replacement, then cleaning is worth a try.
Can You Clean A Malfunctioning Keypad PCB?
It’s possible to clean board connections with acetone, isopropyl alcohol, or products like Chipquik or Servisol. You apply cleaning agent with a fine brush to remove light corrosion, dirt or dust from processor connectors. Make sure you applying minimum pressure and be sure not to scrub.
This might work, or it might cause new issues to emerge. There’s no point pretending board cleaning isn’t a Hail Mary – brushing solvents on boards or sloshing a board around in a bucket of demineralised water for 10 seconds then drying it as fast as possible is a practise of very last resort. Once you’ve gone to these extremes without success the components are done.
Before you do any of this, we’d be testing some basics like voltage drop. Even if the number you’re measuring into the keypad looks ok it’s always worth connecting a malfunctioning device to the panel using a short bridging cable, just to be sure broken wire strands or aggregate voltage losses in old cables and terminations are not at fault.
You can read more about printed circuit board cleaners here or read more SEN news here.
“Can You Clean A Malfunctioning Keypad PCB.”
