Cleaning Plated Electrical Contacts?
in [Repair]
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From: William Sommerwerck on 18 Sep 2009 12:20 The original Caig Cramolin (red) works well on tin and nickel surfaces. ProGold does a fairly good job on gold surfaces. Go to the Caig site and see what you think. Try not to be too alarmed at the high prices. (These are "professional" (not consumer) products, and Caig gouges.) There are probably other effective products out there.
From: Arfa Daily on 18 Sep 2009 12:42 "nesesu" <neil_sutcliffe(a)telus.net> wrote in message news:266cd8ae-325e-4cd7-bd08-43d62fd4892e(a)w37g2000prg.googlegroups.com... On Sep 18, 8:28 am, GeneO <geno...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Have been Googling the proper way to clean plated electrical contacts > but either get nothing if use " or a lot of nonrelevant hits without. > > Am interested in any suggestions esp how to remove the nonconductive > oxides. > > If a connector is too damaged would also be interested in what are > considered the best type replacement. > > Thanks > > Gene I get the impression that you are talking about pin and socket connectors rather than 'button' contacts as used in relays for example. First of all, connectors have a very finite numbers of mate-unmate cycles in their original design and once they reach that number [either half] they are basically scrap. Further, if you mate a worn out connector with a good one, you may contaminate the surface of the 'good' half and compromise it's future performance. Except for connectors especially designed for large numbers of mating, most commercial connectors are good for 50 to 200 cycles, and that is highly dependent on the environmental conditions [dust and grit are a quick death]. Neil S. That seems a bit pessimistic. I have many lead sets in my workshop - phono, jack, XLR, Speakon, SCART etc - which have been made up using fairly 'bog-standard' connectors from the likes of Maplin, Farnell etc, or bought ready made from the same sources, and these are used several times, just about every day, to connect up items that are in for repair. Many have been in use for years. Musical instruments are jacked into amplifiers and mixer desks many many more times than 200 in their life, and most such items employ very 'standard' and inexpensive makes and designs of jacks and plugs. I think that I would be pretty disappointed with *any* connector in a user application, no matter how cheap and nasty it was, that was considered shagged out after as little as 200 uses. Arfa
From: William Sommerwerck on 18 Sep 2009 12:46 > First of all, connectors have a very finite numbers of mate-unmate > cycles in their original design and once they reach that number > [either half] they are basically scrap. Further, if you mate a worn > out connector with a good one, you may contaminate the surface > of the 'good' half and compromise its future performance. > Except for connectors especially designed for large numbers of mating, > most commercial connectors are good for 50 to 200 cycles, and that is > highly dependent on the environmental conditions [dust and grit are a > quick death]. That's an awfully small number. A properly manufactured gold-plated connector should be good for at least 10 times that, shouldn't it? I'm pretty certain the sorts of connectors used on (say) flash RAM are good for a couple thousand cycles. They'd have to be (???), as it's assumed the card will be repeatedly inserted and removed.
From: Adrian Tuddenham on 18 Sep 2009 15:02 GeneO <genosmm(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Have been Googling the proper way to clean plated electrical contacts > but either get nothing if use " or a lot of nonrelevant hits without. > > Am interested in any suggestions esp how to remove the nonconductive > oxides. > > If a connector is too damaged would also be interested in what are > considered the best type replacement. For brass 316 jack plugs, use a green nylon scouring pad. If the corrosion is on battery connectors that have been used with alkaline batteries, you will wreck the surface with dry physical cleaning before you make contact - but with a drop of water, the corrosion comes off easily. -- ~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) www.poppyrecords.co.uk
From: whit3rd on 19 Sep 2009 19:04
On Sep 18, 9:46 am, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgee...(a)comcast.net> wrote: > > First of all, connectors have a very finite numbers of mate-unmate > > cycles in their original design... > > most commercial connectors are good for 50 to 200 cycles > That's an awfully small number. A properly manufactured gold-plated > connector should be good for at least 10 times that, shouldn't it? If you have logic levels in mind, and some noise margin, a slightly dirty connector is no big issue. Some RF test equipment, though, has to be concerned with milliohms of resistance, and can be completely defeated by a small amount of oxide (like, a copper oxide rectifier making harmonics out of your main signal, or a mechanical vibration sensitivity - the avionics guys hate that). So, commercial connectors that are 'good' for 200 cycles are possibly adequate for 10,000. There's a few critical applications where connector insertions are counted and connector-replace is performed at suitable intervals. |