Patrick,

 I started with 2 drops of acetone on a Q-Tip and now we talk about $750 a gallon 200 proof?

That 200 proof will pull water from the air so I wonder how long before it is down to liquor store quality! (I think this needs some testing!)

My little 1 quart can of acetone is easy to get. I also have another dispensing bottle for hardware store variety alcohol (ethanol). I am typically just touching up. Complete board cleaning is a hot water squirt down. (Engineering protos here.) All my flux is WS but de-soldering braids sometime use unknown fluxes.

Sometime I think the conversations on this list go a little astray!

Bob K.


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Patrick Goodyear
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 9:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Acetone as a cleaning agent for PCBA's

IMHO Acetone is a bad idea to much risk in damaging the board mask and 
substrate.   Acetone is used as a solvent for fiberglass resins.   I 
have stated before we use 200 proof dehydrated, un denatured alcohol. 
Use in a well ventilated room.  Runs about $750 a gal but lasts a long 
time.    That included the federal booze tax and Cal. state taxes. 
Mildly denatured leaves a residue but will clean, we use that for 
stainless steel cleaning.      I learned about 200 proof in uncle sams 
yacht and canoe club, that was all we were allowed to use.    Had  to 
get it from the doc in minute quantity's. 
.pat
On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Douglas Pauls wrote:

> Bob,
> Too many unknowns to give you a good answer. 1.  Why is acetone used 
> to wipe down the boards?  Bad idea in general.
> 2.  What is meant by "boards appeared dirty"?  What visual effect is 
> being noted?  And is this at the bare board level or after some
> processing>
>
> Doug Pauls
>
>
>
> From:   Robert DeQuattro <[log in to unmask]>
> To:     <[log in to unmask]>
> Date:   02/20/2014 11:01 AM
> Subject:        [TN] Acetone as a cleaning agent for PCBA's
> Sent by:        TechNet <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>
> I have a customer that uses acetone to wipe down their PCBA's upon 
> receipt.
> The assemblies we make for them are cleaned using a closed loop 
> aqueous board washer then sampled for cleanliness with our zero-ion 
> tester per J-std-001E guidelines.
> Recently this customer commented that boards appeared dirty upon 
> cleaning with the acetone.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this 
> acetone cleaning process.
> Thanks,
>
> Bob
>
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