That actually makes a lot of sense. From this I understand the advice would be to wash your keycaps with soap dissolved in distilled or de-ionised water – especially important if your regular tap water is hard water.
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I would suggest it could be hard water post rinse. Has anyone considered that?
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Look a little closer. 
I’m guilty of skimming too… 
Seven out of the last nine comments are about hard water scale (including this one). 
Welcome to the community BTW!
somewhat off topic but not quite … but: in the UK, what is “distilled water” called and where can you buy it? Couldn’t find it at various grocery stores in London …
Seems strange that you can’t find it in stores in the UK, but you should be able to get it online (Amazon, etc.). There’s also deionized water, but it’s not quite the same. I think it still has some impurities compared to distilled water.
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Strange, but true: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPAP/comments/tba5s4/the_closest_we_get_to_buying_distilled_water_in/
It seems like you can get it from Amazon, or if you search for it there are some other websites selling it.
Here in Hungary you can get it at every pharmacy.
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It’s everywhere here in the US as well. You can pick some up in just about any gas station or grocery store. I have at least three locations that carry some within five minutes “walking” distance (
).
Deionized water can still contain minerals. It’s just water that has all dissolved ions removed so it won’t conduct electricity. Often, this is achieved by passing it through a charcoal filter.
Distilled water is evaporated from one container and condensed in another to leave most dissolved materials behind.
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The surfaces of the first batch I got were completely smooth. The second batch had a slight bumpy texture so your fingers don’t slide off the keys.
Hi,
I’m a little bit ashamed to say its the first time I completely removed the keycaps of my UHK60v1 for a clean and run into the same problem like shown in the pictures. I had the same observations as @DavidHarkness there. The surface of the keycaps looked really smooth. After cleaning it is more rough and looks exactly like the keycluster keycaps.
I don’t belive it is scale buildup or anything like that. I used osmosis water with the same problem. The residue is not reacting to acid and cleaning it “polishes” the surface, but it doesn’t matter if its microfiber with water or acid.
The residue is more “rubbery” and “gooey”. Since it sits in between the rough surface, it is hart to clean and only scratching it with my fingernail seems to really work.
The tip with the oil:
This only works if the residue is left “intact” on the keys. It polishes it, makes it “shiny”, but doesn’t “cleanup” the keycap. This will be a easier solution for ruined keys, but beware: if you have cleaned one keycap already, scratched the residue, etc. polishing it with oil won’t lead to “clean” results.
Cleaning with only warm water and a little bit of dishsoap:
Rubbing the residue of on one half:
“Smoothing” with oil, slight improvement but will whiten again if the oil is rubbed of by using the key:
I also tried dishwater tabs, acid and keycap soup.
Supplied for your entertainment, don’t try this. 100 C should be fine for PBT, still it didn’t help with the residue, so no need to try this 
Isopropanol also doesn’t do anything. And if you love your wooden palmrests, you should stay away from that stuff anyway. ( Wood wrist rest re-coating )
This is the current state of my keycaps after trying to clean with water + soap.
Note the Keycluster keys.
Note Keys 3 and 4.
4 is cleaned completely. 3 is “polished” with vegetable oil. Looks fine in this picture, with a slightly other angel you can still see the residue left.
@mlac I guess it might be hard to verify anything about injection mold release agent stuff used, maybe still worth a try.
I can’t think of any other good solution then to cleanup every single key once.
While I understand that you most likely will not replace whole sets of keycaps after x years, it is something which should not be a consumer problem.
This is frustrating as f*****. Would I still buy a new one tomorrow if this breaks? Most probably yes.
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Would you elaborate on exactly what you did to your keycaps? Then we could ask our supplier.
Also, I’m confused about your photos: some seem to show the older ABS keycaps from the UHK 60 v1, while others show the newer PBT keycaps that were provided afterward. Please clarify what your experience is with each keycap type.
Hi, now you got me confused
I did not mix any keycaps and the pictures show the set of PBT keycaps received with my keyboard back then.
Keyboard: UHK 60v2, Ordered 2021-01-17, #8804
Keycluster: Ordered 2022-04-25, #12720 (shortly after I received the keyboard with the production/shipping delays back then)
I didn’t take a “before cleaning” shot, but this contains a picture taken 2024: Palm rest lacquer fix
For cleaning I used simple dish soap and water roughly around a temperature of roguhly around 40 degrees C. Soaked for a couple of minutes, got the result from the pictures.
This is one of the keys which I just “polished”, not scrubbing that residue off:
Same treatment again. Distilled water makes no difference:
This does not happen to the keycluster keys, which I’ve included for reference (the one with the dot).
Never removed all the keys completely for cleaning, so I’m confident this is nothing I accidently applied. Used microfiber cloth and water for that anyway…
I’m also confused!
The keycaps in your last post look like ABS keycaps. Can you take a shot of their backs? That’d surely confirm. The UHK 60 v2 should have shipped only with PBT keycaps, so I don’t understand the discrepancy.
In the first photo of your Problems with cleaning my UHK - #30 by echox post, there are two keycaps below each other. Both of them seem to be PBT keycaps. Please also take a photo of their backs.
Left: Keycluster
Middle: “O”, “P”, “;”, [“
Right: “Space,”, “Mod”
This looked double shot injection molded to me and at least they feel different to my regular ABS keycaps.
This photo of yours seems to feature ABS keycaps, and you mentioned your “UHK 60 v1” which we provided with ABS keycaps.
Keycaps with the stripe pattern on their backs are clearly PBT.
Sorry for the hassle, but we need to confirm whether ABS, PBT, or both keycap types are affected because they’re completely different in this respect.