Cleaning Motherboards - ATTN SMOKERS!!

[TBoneit]

I hate that I need to keep a can of Raid at work for roach infested computers. I don't want them in the shop where I could take them home.

Good tips on cleaning boards

[ncovert]

I've never seen or dealt with a PC with roaches, but I have had to clean out a computer with a mouse nest in it (luckily there were no live mice or dead mice in the case, just the nest.) Mouse nest is not as bad as roaches, it was just a ball of paper and insulation, and there were some mouse droppings on the cables. Yuck!

[Solder]

Eh I've seen a few dead bugs in computer cases...I rinse stuff off with water when I don't have compressed air but doing it as a practice sounds like a pretty good idea

[inuyasha.rules]

Personally I use awesome brand cleaner. Get it at the dollar store, can't beet a 32oz bottle for $1! Had a van once that looked lime someone rebuilt the motor on the back seat, 2 bottles of awesome latter and the interior was spotless. Also fyi pc boards almost all get a bath in a dishwasher of some form, usually a continues feed but I read of some upstart using standard maytags from home depot.

As a side note bugs in general seem to love computers. Had a huge ass moth take out my thermaltake xblower.

[ThePCDoctor]

In all the years that I worked for NCR Corp, as a field tech, I always carried a squeeze bottle of Pure Household (Bo-Peep) ammonia in my tool kit.
In the shop, we had a spray booth, where I could blow the ammonia onto a really gross BAR Cash Register with 100+ PSI air. It stinks to high heaven, but Ammonia will peel the accumulated tobacco smoke off of just about anything like peeling the skin off an onion.

I also ran my own PC Board manufacturing business and the last step in making a PC Board is washing it. You don't want to start soldering parts onto a Dirty board. Eh? The final rinse, was always Denatured Alcohol.

I blew a lot of minds when I posted on a few PC Help Forums several years ago, the topic "Wash That Ram". To the best of my memory, in the last 20+ years, I've only thrown out two sticks of ram, that tested bad. One was Spectec (Superman) Ram, and the other one was Kingston. Every other stick of ram that's ever tested bad was not really bad.....it was just Dirty. A little bit of contamination between those tiny legs on a ram chip, can act just like a piece of wire, shorting the legs together. So, when a ram stick acts funky or tests bad under a Memtest, I take it to the sink and Wash it. Dawn dishwashing detergent and an old toothbrush, works great. And make the water as hot as you can stand it on your hands. My final rinse, not mentioned in the previous tutorial, is Denatured Alcohol.
(not Isopropyl *) Alcohol displaces the water and dries much faster.
I've washed ram, rinsed in alcohol, dried with a hair dryer on LOW heat and put right back in the computer within minutes.
If you're squeamish about the soap and water, then just use the Denatured Alcohol. Unlike water, it's NON-Conductive.

* So why do I say NOT to use Isopropyl Alcohol? It can be anywhere from 10% to 40% water. You can't really displace water with more water. Use only Denatured Alcohol, which is also used for Lamp Fuel, paint thinner, etc. It Burns, so keep it away from any open flame.

I'm 100% in agreement with the OP, that washing a funky PC-Board is normal and proper.

Thanks for this very informative thread!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like we're more likely to have a skeeterputer! lol

[PCBONEZ]

Denatured Alcohol has additives to make it more poisonous which means it has impurities that may be left behind on a PCB if it's used as a cleaner.

That is a problem that Isopropyl does not have and the reason Isopropyl is approved for use on electronics equipment used in Nuclear Power plants and Denatured Alcohol is not.

Even at 70% Isopropyl absorbs a great deal of -additional- water and doesn't leave any behind so the PCB will have less water after 70% is used and the existing water content is a mute point.
[And 90+% is easy enough to find.]

Even if Isopropyl did leave something behind [which it won't] it would only be water.

Just saying "use Denatured Alcohol" can get people into trouble.
Some of the chemicals added in various 'compilations' of Denatured Alcohol are harmful to PCB materials which makes it a very poor choice as a cleaner for PCBs unless you know -everything- that is in the specific mix you are using -and- the implications of the all the additives used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol
For example, if you happen to pick up one that uses Acetone for the denaturing [Acetone is the active ingredient in fingernail polish remover] you are apt to turn the conformal coating into a goo that never hardens or it might soften the PCB material itself.
.

~~~
Now, as to washing the RAM. - VERY good idea!
.

[EPAIII]

Great thread!

On the use of alcohol, I have washed many non computer boards, some that cost thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars so I had to be very careful. I was in a commercial environment so I also needed to get them back in action quickly, not days later so a fast drying solvent, like alcohol, was needed. Frankly, I never worried about the soap or detergent I used and, in my experience, almost any commercially sold soap or detergent that does not contain bleach will be just fine if you wash it off completely within a few minutes.

What I did do was wash them down with 90% or 99% pure alcohol after the tap water rinse. I used plastic squirt bottles with the small nozzles to produce a directed stream and I always used fresh, completely clean alcohol which immediately went down the drain, never to be used again. One of the big dangers is to use a solvent (water or alcohol or whatever) which has previous contaminants already dissolved it it. When the solvent evaporates, it leaves those contaminants behind. It isn't worth it to save a little solvent. I never had any problems with any boards, even years after such washings. Unlike computer boards, some of these boards had working Voltages in the hundreds and even thousands of Volts. The use of a pure alcohol rinse allowed them to go back in service within minutes of that final rinse.

Several questions have been asked about washing different kinds of boards. It is not the type of board, but the parts mounted on it that counts. I have found that the following kinds of parts can be difficult to wash completely clean and any residue left inside them can often leave them worse off than before washing: switches, keyboards, relays, displays, non-sealed variable resistors, non-sealed variable caps, some transformers, connectors and sockets. If these components are open enough to force the stream of alcohol into all corners of their insides, then they can be effectively flushed out in this manner. However, some of them can not be completely flushed and residue may remain inside them. One thing that has caused problems in the past is flux being carried inside switches or IC sockets by the very solvents used to wash them off the board. It can take many additional flushes to clean them out. In view of this, it may be better to leave all socketed ICs in place while washing: that way the already existing, solid contact is retained with no chance of additional contamination. If they need to be re-seated, re-seat them before washing.

If you are really worried about contaminating a part, you can direct all washing and rinsing liquids away from it via gravity. Hold the board vertically above the sink and spray the cleaning solution on the board below that component instead of dipping it, carefully use a toothbrush to scrub it, and direct all rinses to miss the worrisome component and not drip into it. Allow one section to dry before rotating or inverting the board to do the next section.

I have attempted to wash keyboards. Some are not the $5 or $10 variety that can be easily and cheaply replaced. Most keyboards will not dry, even after weeks, because the water gets between membranes where there is no air. The only method that I found to work with any success is to completely disassemble them and hand dry all parts before reassembly: and sometimes even this is not effective. This is only cost effective if it is an expensive keyboard. Oh, and Coca-Cola will etch the traces completely off these membranes so no amount of cleaning will fix such a spill.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like I saw a mosquito again outside. lol.

[Fud]

So I guess it wasn't a good idea seeing that extra drive bay not being used and retrofitting it with a pull out push in car ashtray then. Now you guys tell me after all this time!

[PCBONEZ]

Originally Posted by Fud

So I guess it wasn't a good idea seeing that extra drive bay not being used and retrofitting it with a pull out push in car ashtray then. Now you guys tell me after all this time!

Did you install a car lighter too?
.

[aidynphoenix]

I did something similar a few days ago. i wish i would of had known about the mean green.
story goes, wife and husband were in argument, husband decides to take the side off the tower and dump his beer, or soda in the tower. wife freaks out, and tosses the tower out the back door. they gave me the tower and said, hey maybe you can do something with it, < I'm a computer guy. well i tried it out at the time and i couldent get it to do anything but beep at me. the hardrive didnt get soaked in liquid and worked so that got put to use at the time. but the rest of the tower sat in my garage for about 6 months, and i prettymuch forgot about it. a few days ago i found it and decided id try it again, although now there was mouse poop all over the board, and it looks like the mice had been eating the vinyl covering around the capacitors, the board was disgusting, as i removed parts and took the motherboard out of the case i removed the processor to see if it was worth fixing, is a pentium4, 3.2ghz one of the ones that dont have pins, the pins are on the motherboard, well i saw that the pins and processor had beer or soda stans on it, so i decided id clean the board, try and get the mouse poop out of the dimm slots and pci slots, and try it out again. i tilted the board at a angle on a table outside, i proped it up against a plastic crayon box, and sprayed it down with ammonia based cleaner. and used compressed air to try and shoot the mouse poop out of the slots on the board, the amonia seemed to clean it pretty well. i let that airdry. i used soap and water on the case and powersupply. all the plugs on the powersupply were sticky and had soda or beer inside them so i had to use more ammonia on those, after cleaning the case, i sat it on a chair, and had my space heater blow air into it. the powersupply i used a air compresser to try and get all the water off the boards, than sat it on the side with the top removed to dry, i didnt want to use heat on the psu because it has caps. the tower is working now,, i need to order more ram for it, and put a hardrive in it. than it will be ready to go.. hopefully all the capacitors are alright. i guess il find out when i put windows on it.

[pol098]

Interesting and long-running thread. I have a comment about the sheer time it takes things with nooks and crevices to dry naturally. A cordless DECT phone got dropped in dirty water, with battery in. I removed the battery and immersed it in tap water (all that was to hand), then took the back off without any further disassembly and soaked it in water that had been boiled and left to cool (to precipitate out the temporary hardness salts at least). I don't remember if I then used deionised water (it was a long time ago). I left it to dry for quite a long time (maybe a month, certainly weeks), but it didn't work, so I put it aside. Many months later I found it and thought I'd give it a last try; it worked. So either use the drying techniques recommended here (heat, alcohol) or leave it a seriously long time. I was too convinced it was dead to go to more trouble.

Re keyboard: a long time ago I heard of people who had success with cleaning them in dishwashers. Maybe it was before membrane keyboards?

Someone who cleans oscilloscopes said "For better cleaning,try running the PCB through your automatic dishwasher using Calgonite (leave the dishwasher's drying heat OFF) and dry in a commercial drying oven or rig up a hot box and a whisper fan or two to pull air out of the box.You don't want to exceed 150 degF in the box. It should dry for about 3 days. "

An instance where water did damage was a powered-up wireless router in an office which had a sewage leakage from above over a weekend. After soaking in water it didn't smell. It worked as a modem/router/switching hub, but the wireless function didn't work. The bare copper traces on the wireless board going into the edge connector were visibly eaten through. Whether corroded or electrolysed I cannot say; I was surprised that any functionality was left.

[osaeed]

can you wash a board with distilled water too?

[Topcat]

^
Of course. Just follow the same procedure as if it were tap.

[goodpsusearch]

This computer that I got for free was in a shop for years.

The smell is very annoying.

[ThePCDoctor]

When washing fails to revive a PC, then use it for something important:



Cheers Mates!
the Doctor

[JohnLWG]

I hate working on devices from smokers. I've seen drive trays with the channels so encrusted with tar that the tray seemed glued shut, fans making tar taffy with sticky nictoine dust bunnies, and phones that smelled so strongly of smoike that I had to completely tear them down and wash each parts individually to get the stink out. Blackberry models seem to soak of odors better than other phones, and it's for this reason that I'm glad RIM is failing.

I use a few things to get the stink out:

isopropyl alchohol/distilled water. This helps clean it up and is useful for water damaged smart phones as well. I've also read about the solvents present in denaturated alcohol and avoid it. I believe that drugstore isopropyl is cut with distilled water, so mineral deposits are not an issue no matter what the ratito of water/alkcohol is.

&

activated charcoal- After cleaning everything I stick the parts in a bin with a sock full of activated charcoal. It does a good job muting any remaing odors.

I've tried coffe grounds as well, but then the phone/ipod/device smells like coffee which can be annoying too.


If I'm buying a broken device for refurbisment a strong odor of ciggarettes cuts my offer in half

[JuniperSprouts]

MXM,

Where do you live? If you want recommendations...

-


Elitist,

What is an American sprayer?

[TELVM]

I've water washed several old dirty motherboards with zero problems afterwards, but I've never washed a PSU. Can we also water wash an old dirty power suppy with reasonable confidence?