Editing Beam spring (section)

==Disassembly==
One should take care when removing the keycaps from a beam spring keyboard.  The keycap's mounting slots are weak, and are prone to breakage, causing them to come loose from the switch's key stem. In some cases, the beam spring itself has been known to break. It is possible that this is a product of poor storage/heavy wear, as they are otherwise quite durable.  Keycaps should preferably be removed with the aid of a keycap puller tool, pulling up slowly, and gently wiggling the keycap back and forth. It should not be pulled up straight, or wiggled from side to side. 

When the switch is removed from the keyboard, the fly plate can become detached quite easily. The picture gallery below details IBM's official procedure for reattaching it. However, whereas the manual recommends that the user reattach the two sides separately, it is somewhat easier to push the two sides of the beam spring so that they are caught between the two sides of the fly spring (but not attached), and then slowly pulling the fly plate down. The tension of the beam spring will usually cause its tabs to slide into the slots on the fly spring when they come into contact with each other.

IBM offered replacement beam spring key modules to customers as an FRU (Field Replaceable Unit – i.e. a component that could be replaced without returning the item to IBM) and thus Beam Spring keyboards are possibly one of the few keyboards that were designed to allow individual keys to be replaced.