Red Erasors

From: Russ Blakeman <rhblake_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Mon Mar 13 08:57:14 2000

If you dip a eraser in regular rubbing alcohol (or denatured) it will act much
like polishing compound, cleaning oxides, airborne dirt and particles (ie
tar/nicotine) off copper, gold, etc contacts and traces without any weardown of
the area. I've rebuilt Decision Data/HP video data terminal keyboards after
spills and general filthy use and a white/gray eraser dipped in alcohol cleaned
it and left even the mylar unscratched whereas a dry one shows wear scratches
in the mylar and will eventually take the printed traces off the mylar. It works
equally well on relay contacts where you can open them enough to get the tip
of the eraser in between.

The obvious thing is that the circuit has to be off and any capacitive buildup
removed or it will light you up....

Marvin wrote:

> Technoid_at_cheta.net wrote:
> >
> > You know as well as I do what hell some of these machines lived in an how
> > robust they really are. A red erasor is not going to do anything negative
> > to a 'finger' on a board. I have my 130xe for 15 years and have used an
> > erasor at least 30 times on various boards. No impact other than to solve
> > spurious flaky problems. The reason why I like the red ones is for thier
> > mild abrasive quality. The softer ones don't take off the oxide.
>
> Gosh, I didn't realize gold oxidized :). Second, while I also use erasors to
> clean gold fingers, I would fully expect any abrasive material to remove
> some of the gold. How much? Darned if I know.
Received on Mon Mar 13 2000 - 08:57:14 GMT