I’m looking for a small, gentle vacuum for keyboards and small collectables that can’t really be washed/dusted (that contain cloth, like dolls). Ebay lists loads that are insanely cheap. What’s a good kind or a price that indicates not-crap?
Thank you, and I hope I got the right forum for this.
That might be a good idea because I once used a regular vacuum and it sucked up a couple of keys right up. Learned that’s not a good idea so I’m curious too.
Camel hair brushes work good. You can slightly dampen it when cleaning the keyboard to lift off stuff that sticks to the keys.
Thank you for the suggestions, but I’m definitely sold on the vacuum thing at this point. Any recommendations for those?
I don’t know how cheap you mean but I use a shop-vac. Would you consider investing in one of those - justifying the cost by using it for other jobs around the house or workplace?
Sucking is nowhere near as effective as blowing.
None of those keyboard vacuums can produce enough suction to be worth a damn. I find turning them upside down and bang them on the table gets out the loose dirt and crud.
If they are really grunged, I’ll take the whole assembly apart and wash the keyboard part. The actual switches in modern keyboards are in a membrane switch assembly, while the keys are plastic mechanism that presses on the membrane. You can run the keys through the dishwasher, as long as you don’t run a heated drying cycle. Just make sure the whole thing is dry before re-assembling it.
Note: This advice only applies to keyboards.