| >I also do refurbishing, I’ve never found IPA to damage boards (evaporates fast without any residue.) Do you brush dust off? If I dont use a brush with the IPA, it leaves behind the dust residue in clumps. Also more worryingly, it seems to leave contacts less shiny than before which is what concerns me. >You can deyellow with retrobright, but the downside is that it makes plastic more brittle. Yeah I have a pile of plastics I've been collecting that I wish to try with retrobrite but I haven't made the jump yet. I plan to try the 'vapor' method to be as gentle as possible on the plastic. >For some stains you can get them out with a magic eraser, it’s essentially a high grit sponge. In my experience magic eraser does remove stains but also smooths the plastic and removes the small bumps and bruises you naturally have on a lot of plastic pieces from the 90s. That roughness I am talking about is from the metal mold. Also magic eraser is terrible for clear plastics. How do you deal with that? >Agreed about deoxit, it’s still good for contacts though (cartridges and such.) Yes but the spray version gets everywhere. There are different versions of deoxit. I tired D-series and this stuff just does not fully evaporate from the board. I'm looking to try G series in the hopes that it does not leave a mess that I have to later clean. |
I would make sure you’re not pushing around residue if it leaves contacts duller, 99% IPA shouldn’t leave it’s own residue (unless the dullness is from scratching the pads with the cleaning.)
Vapor method works well enough, but requiring sunny days is a bit of a bummer. I use it sometimes, but submersing in a UV box works pretty well without being too rough.
I honestly don’t run into that with magic eraser, you’re keeping the eraser wet right? I might just be pretty gentle with it, but I’m pretty sensitive to this stuff and haven’t noticed any damage.
Yep go for the direct application stuff, I forget exactly which series it is but is easier to apply. One thing I’ve copied from the YouTuber TronicsFix is applying the deoxit to a small square of magic eraser and using that to clean the contacts.