6130 keyboard repair.

For reasons still unknown to me, I have a habit of letting my 2-year-old sit on my lap and play with the keyboard and mouse on occasion. Its pretty cute and all, but his little fingers are quite good at pulling the keys off. My old HP lost some unimportant keys that way, but he managed to remove my enter key on the Averatec. If anyone has ever seen the underside of a laptop key, you know how hard it is to get back on. They have a tiny plastic hinge that has to fit perfectly into the key.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I was unable to get the key back on the hinge, but was able to get half of it on. If anyone else has this problem, here is my solution. I got half in, then glued the other half to the hinge with a tiny bit of glue, let it sit overnight with a light weight holding it in place, and it is good as new (fingers crossed, its been about a month). The key is using a glue that is strong, but slightly pliable. I used superglue, but that lasted only about a week. Too brittle I think. Next was rubber cement, lasted about a week as well, but I think it wasn't strong enough. The glue that seems to be working is Gorilla Glue, which I got at home depot. I've used that stuff on several projects and it is definitely as good as the label claims. It is very strong, but has a little give which makes it ideal for this type of repair.
Hopefully no one else will have to try this out, but good luck if you do.

 

Good to know about that Gorilla glue. And glad to see you got a Home Depot in Anchorage ... never been that far north myself.

 

Sure we have Home Depot up here. We're all about building things, ...well that and cutting things down, drilling things, mining things, and shooting a few other things.