>>>> "Joe" == Joe R <rigdonj
at cfl.rr.com> writes:
Joe> At 06:17 PM 11/14/05 +0000, Jules wrote:
> My only caution would be that gold/ceramic ICs
tend to have
> markings printed on with an ink that detergent will remove quite
> nicely (made that mistake once when cleaning a PCB, won't be doing
> it again :) Other components seem to survive such cleanings quite
> happily though.
Joe> Speaking of gold/white ceramic ICs. I found a stash of NOS RCA
Joe> 1801 CPUs last week. Some of them were stored in that nasty
Joe> black antistatic foam that disintegrates with age and the ICs
Joe> are now fused with the foam. I've tried to pull a couple of them
Joe> out and some of the legs broke off of them. Does anyone know a
Joe> way to dissolve the foam ...
Don't know if it will help here, but I keep a bottle of lacquer
thinner around the garage. It dissolves lots of stuff -- it's the
best thing I have found for removing adhesive labels of all kinds
(other than benzene which is hard to get these days). It also attacks
most types of plastic, so it isn't suitable for cleaning them. But it
might be good for dissolving one.
If that doesn't work, try acetone. Usually, if a plastic is soluble
at all, it will be soluble in one of those two. (Hm, not always --
vinyl requires something special. Look at the ingredients list on a
waterbed patch kit. Hexane? Something like that.)
paul