| General > General Technical Chat |
| Brake cleaner is cheap and cleans PCBs really well |
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| Monkeh:
--- Quote from: T3sl4co1l on July 23, 2021, 08:58:46 pm ---If you're not buying them by the barrel, plus it's packed in an aerosol can, I fail to see how that's at all atypical retail markup. Tim --- End quote --- I buy 600ml cans of brake cleaner for £2.50 or so. |
| T3sl4co1l:
That's pretty good. I get a liter of acetone around here for like $10. Haven't looked at brake cleaner in a while... Tim |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: Monkeh on July 23, 2021, 06:56:33 pm ---You have a strange definition of not expensive for a blend of cyclohexane, isopropanol, and heptane. Electrolube are laughing to the bank with that stuff. Oh, there's a bit of antifreeze in it too. --- End quote --- I bought two cans about two years ago and I'm about half-way through the first. I think I'll manage with paying the retail markup. |
| MathWizard:
On the little PCBs I've been working on this year, I've just been using hot soapy water, and a toothbrush. Then I just dry them over my computers fans. It seems to work pretty well, but some stuff I really don't like getting wet. I've been using some strong MG flux, and it leaves conductive residue sometimes, I should not use it on SMD anymore. |
| T3sl4co1l:
Interesting. I don't know that I've used any flux that would respond much at all to soapy water, even after a looong soak. Strong bases though, saponify the rosin acids effectively. But that does nothing for the metal soaps/salts already present (i.e. the cruddy stuff that the rosin did its job at dissolving). So it'll still leave crud, plus being rather aggressive towards anything else present (may degrade plastics?). Heh, or you're using so much rosin that the base chemicals (usually some combination of petroleum jelly and glycol ethers?) stick around (the deposit is still gooey?), and the metal oxides are well dissolved and dispersed, not clumpy. So everything suspends and washes away. There's never too much flux... ;D I would suppose a combination of base (maybe a milder one like ammonia will do? -- may complex (dissolve) some of the metal salts too) and alcohols might do the best. Not sure what all they use in commercial blends. (Note that acetone is incompatible with base, it'll oligomerize; alcohols are okay, as are most detergents.) (Heh, and that's pure base by the way; carbonates, phosphates, silicates, etc. will all precipitate metal ions, no chance of them dissolving. Probably just as good a reason as any, why base isn't as effective as I might first imagine...) Tim |
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