Building cheap, custom keyboards and buttons using paper, cardboard, and aluminum foil is one sure method that works well. But, what about other methods for building cheap buttons? Or, what if you have some cheap buttons in existing consumer electronics that have started to fail? How do you repair those?
Now, this is where we get some more interesting ideas:
- Aluminum foil (thus mentioned)
- Pencil lead, i.e. graphite. This is actually how some commercial “conductive rubber” variants are made.
- Conductive ink pen
- Conductive paint
- Aluminum foil tape
- Copper foil tape
- Gum wrappers
- Hammer copper wire flat
Finally, simply cleaning the conductive rubber pads in cheap commercial buttons can do the trick. But, be careful because cleaning is also a common cause of eroding the conductive rubber pads.
20190228/DuckDuckGo resurface conductive rubber button
20190228/https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/6584/fix-remote-controller-button-contacts
This is a very good article on electronic button tech and proper cleaning techniques. For conductive rubber buttons, the cheapest use only a coating on the surface that can get worn away or washed away very easily, and therefore should be treated by addition of the conductive coating, not any method of cleaning. More expensive conductive rubber buttons use a conductive polymer throughout such that cleaning them is a viable option.
20190228/http://www.sandman.com/button.html