2 years later
Bumping this thread again. Does Anyone know where to buy an electronics contact cleaner ?
Elie335 wroteBumping this thread again. Does Anyone know where to buy an electronics contact cleaner ?
Karout Mall had them last time I checked as well as Katranji. We got a can a month ago at work
Am not sure why you don't use 95%+ preferably 99% alcohol most contact cleaners are mainly alcohol with an aerosol.
DNA wroteAm not sure why you don't use 95%+ preferably 99% alcohol most contact cleaners are mainly alcohol with an aerosol.
I used to use 99% alcohol, however, the extra cleaning solutions they have in the cans really help when fixing small things like a scroll for a gaming mouse or a button. the solution coming in an aerosol allows the solution to get in the nooks and crannies and helps gets the dirt out of places it shouldn't be in.

I personally have a $50 Logitech M535 Bluetooth mouse that has a problem with the horizontal clicks as well as the scroll wheel, I tried to fix it with alcohol and it did nothing, then I grabbed the contact cleaner spray from work and it worked like magic!
alcohol soaks pretty well actually, i guess you are right some contact cleaners does contain both polar and non polar solvents and may help fix things when alcohol doesn't work. speaking of scroll wheels i had a logitech with a bad scroll wheel nothing helped, i ended up taking it apart and manually bending the contacts which appeared to have worn slighty from use
DNA wrotealcohol soaks pretty well actually, i guess you are right some contact cleaners does contain both polar and non polar solvents and may help fix things when alcohol doesn't work. speaking of scroll wheels i had a logitech with a bad scroll wheel nothing helped, i ended up taking it apart and manually bending the contacts which appeared to have worn slighty from use
My mouse was 2 days old when it started to cause problems, I couldn't return it since I got it on sale for a fraction of the price. I guess it was a tiny bit of corrosion or dust of some sort, either way, a tiny bit of spray worked like magic
Btw, in some cases you need to avoid alcohol based contact cleaners, as it is conductive.
most alcohols you find in Lebanon are ethanol which is weaker than isopropyl alcohol found in contact cleaners.
nuclearcat wroteBtw, in some cases you need to avoid alcohol based contact cleaners, as it is conductive.
alcohol isn't conductive? i dip entire pcbs in 99% alcohol
DNA wrote
nuclearcat wroteBtw, in some cases you need to avoid alcohol based contact cleaners, as it is conductive.
alcohol isn't conductive? i dip entire pcbs in 99% alcohol
99% alcohol hygroscopic.
And even alcohol get evaporated easily, water part in it happily mixes with dirt and other contaminants under SMD chips, especially QFN/BGA/etc, and might remain longer and cause troubles. Sure if you dry them in hot air properly (and carefully, not not overheat anything), it will be fine, but if not...
So on my opinion - it is very handy, but should be used with reasonable precautions related to this matters.
P.S. Usually in non-food-grade concentrated alcohol they should add special chemicals, so people wont drink it or dont use to manufacture alcoholic drinks. No idea if it is done in Lebanon. And these chemicals might not be good for electronics.
nuclearcat wrote
DNA wrote
nuclearcat wroteBtw, in some cases you need to avoid alcohol based contact cleaners, as it is conductive.
alcohol isn't conductive? i dip entire pcbs in 99% alcohol
99% alcohol hygroscopic.
And even alcohol get evaporated easily, water part in it happily mixes with dirt and other contaminants under SMD chips, especially QFN/BGA/etc, and might remain longer and cause troubles. Sure if you dry them in hot air properly (and carefully, not not overheat anything), it will be fine, but if not...
So on my opinion - it is very handy, but should be used with reasonable precautions related to this matters.
It won't happen what you are saying may theoretically be correct but practically it is not even close to being an issue the 1% water evaporates with the alcohol as water mixed in alcohol will evaporate faster you can even use 95% with no issues
look the reason i dip pcbs in alcohol is that you can use water to clean pcbs yes pure water but water evaporates very slowly thus causing issues you mention so dipping pcbs that has water in alcohol basically replaces water with alcohol and u stick them in an oven or blow some heat and it will evaporate in no time and your pcb is as good as new after being worked on with flux or had corrosion

Edit: Denatured alcohol is very safe with electronics additives are usually other solvents
If its denatured with denatonium benzoate(bitrex), that will leave behind conductive residue.
Ethanol generally fine with normal electronics, but as soon as it gets on high speed or high voltage part, it becomes a problem. For high voltage, creepage and clearance is not built for conductive surface (i mean bitrex issue). I am designing such devices, and this is big issue for anything outdoor, if there is no conformal coating. And by the way if there is any, any solvent might become big problem itself, as it might remove or weaken it (depends on type).
If you are cleaning some pads for low speed with cleaning swab - it is ok, i do it too, but if you are dipping whole board or splashing ethanol on everything - it is bad. Because when it gets under smd chip like this, it wont dry out fast naturally, you need to heat up board, preferably approx slightly over 100C.
Anyway, you might get away with random ethanol bottle, or might get like me 2 weeks wasted for nothing, because some water after cleaning stuck under DDR chip, didnt dried even after 1 day, conducted when i turned it on, corroded and caused random memory errors.
you are mixing things together and you make me sound as if I am a novice and do not know what am doing I've been in the electronics world almost my whole life and ive handled all sorts of equipment what I am telling you is standard procedure that every electronics engineer/technican/expert knows.

if a board has conformal coating it would be another story you need to remove it anyways to repair it and paint some UV solder mask or proper conformal coating if you wanna stay professional no one will ever dip a board in alcohol if it has conformal coating cause it is pointless i previously said the purpose of dipping in alcohol in the first place is not to clean it but to remove any water from cleaning and unfortunate spill or moisture and dry the board fast so alcohol is used to displace the water that may cause issues if kept under chips as mentioned,so conformally coated boards won't be dipped in alcohol because its counter intuitive and doesn't make sense its already water proof.

Regarding denatonium man you are overthinking things it is available in some denatured alcohols as low as 0.0006% that is a negligible amount to worry about and even then once dry and not free ions it doesn't conduct electricity.

Yes using denatured alcohol with unknown contents is not ideal and shouldn't be used professionally i am not trying to endorse it professionally but it works for 90% of cases if it is 95+% ethanol i don't know what boards are you designing and for how long you have been working with electronics, unless you are working with multi GHZ RF transmission of some military grade equipment and even then i would just use regular 99% ispropylalcohol heck i would dip an entire computer board in regular 95% ethanol as long as u do right drying procedures, and not just turn it on second day hoping it dried.

you are concerned about high voltage circuits i am not sure what you consider high voltage on a PCB, but in whatever case using alcohol is fine and won't do any harm.

for high frequency stuff or low impedance sensing circuitry well they are sensitive for minute conductivity across pads but again using alcohol is 100% safe.

I am doing this professionally and for work am not splashing boards with alcohol just for the sake of it certain cleaning procedure require that and it can be handy for detecting short circuits. and no i don't wait for them to dry in air and hoping the next day nothing is under chips any electronics expert knows this procedure, you are making a well known process of working with circuit boards sound unnecessary and will damage boards which is definitely not remotely close to being true.
a month later
I checked Karout Mall website and searched for all sort of things related to "contact cleaner" but couldn't find any such product.
Do you reckon I should visit the store or maybe look elsewhere?
LifeEngineer wroteI checked Karout Mall website and searched for all sort of things related to "contact cleaner" but couldn't find any such product.
Do you reckon I should visit the store or maybe look elsewhere?
Karout Mall doesn't list all their items on the items. In fact, most items are not posted there. I guess due to the differentiation of stock - they keep bringing the same product that is slightly different.