Posted 22 February 2024

COBA, the Central Ohio Bridge Association, owns a number of Bridgemate II table pads, and lately we have been hearing a number of complaints about having to press buttons harder than normal to get the expected response. After some research, one of our members discovered that we could purchase replacement membranes from Bridgemate for $15 each, so we decided to undertake a membrane replacement program.

Opening up a Bridgemate II

The keyboard cover/upper-half can be removed by disengaging a number of flexible plastic tabs, as shown in the following page from the Bridgemate site:

While this wasn’t quite as trivial as the above description, it wasn’t really all that hard. Most of the difficulty was in trying NOT to break things during the opening process on the first unit. Once that was accomplished (thankfully without breaking anything), I’m sure the rest will go much easier. Here are some photos showing the disassembled Bridgemate II

Visual inspection of this first unit showed everything to be very clean – basically indistinguishable from a brand-new unit. In particular, the key membrane seemed to completely intact, and could be easily manipulated between the ‘pressed’ and the ‘unpressed’ states with just fingertip pressure.

Stay tuned,

Frank