[Sussex] Cleaning recommendation?

[John D.]

On Tue, 2005-04-19 at 07:52 +0100, Stephen Williams wrote:
> Here's another tip I've used on processors that have been fouled up by
> too much (electrically conductive) heat sink paste. Remove the processor
> and spray copious quantities of aerosol car brake cleaner at the
> offending paste until no trace of it can be seen. It seems rather
> extreme, but I've rescued 3 processors this way.
> 
> I've no doubt you could try it on other electrical items if nothing else
> works, but I've never needed to resort to this on things other than
> processors. I guess you could try it as a last resort on floppy disks if
> you REALLY needed the info from them.
> 
>  The brake cleaner is available at Halfords.

An excellent tip Steve, though with a minor caveat. 

<health&safety lecture>
If you do use brake cleaner, then fine. Though it's best to do that in a
well ventilated place. Brake cleaner - last time I used some on my bike,
is Trichlorethane/Trichlorethylene (the original engineers "Trike").
It's vvv "vaporous" and one of the original "sniffers delight" type
materials (which, if memory serves me correctly, was one of the reasons
why it was banned in the engineering industry for use in large quantity
i.e. in cleaning tanks).

That said, it's a bloody marvellous solvent/cleaner for just about
anything oil based - some surfaces may show a white residue (similar to
that mentioned by whoever it was that was explaining the benefits of
"canned air" aerosol sprays), but that's usually removed from visible
places with a moist cloth.
</health&safety lecture>

regards

John D.