I cannot find my bottle of Tweek so I need to buy some new contact enhancer. Which one do you use and recommend?
I have looked on eBay and contact enhancers come in liquids that you apply with a brush, squeeze tubes, and aerosol sprays. Which form do you think is best? Thank you in advance for all replies.
-- When I am in the kitchen, I often kick one of my cat's balls. After I kick it, he will sometimes play with it for a few seconds to several minutes. His favorite are the ones that rattle. He'll play with any ball that makes noise.
"Tweek" was a rebranded version of Stabilant 22A (which is Stabilant
22, diluted in isopropyl alcohol). "Tweek" is no longer being marketed by the rebrander, but Stabilant 22 is still available from the original manufacturer and their distributors:It's not a contact clear/deoxidizer, although it probably does have some cleaning action simply because in its diluted form it's mostly isopropyl alcohol. If your contacts are dirty, save some money and clean them with pure isopropyl alcohol first, then apply the Stabilant sparingly. If they're heavily oxidized or corroded, you'll want to deal with that via a separate cleaning process first.
Their smallest standard package is 5 ml of concentrate, which is usually diluted 4:1 or 5:1 in isopropyl alcohol to make a working solution. This should be enough to last you for a lifetime!
Since I usually apply Stabiliant to small connectors, I prefer the liquid form (diluted as recommended), applied with a small brush or Q-tip. Less wasteful that way. I don't really see the sense to spraying a "contact enhancer" around using an aerosol... most of it is going to go where it does no good.
I have only limited experience with other "contact enhancers". I've used Cramolin (the original red/blue concentrate bottles), DeOxIt, and various homebrew formulas... but these are more contact cleaners / oxide removers than "contact enhancers". In fact, some of these products really need to be thoroughly removed from contacts (or neutralized) after use - leaving a residue of them on the contacts can eventually degrade the contacts.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
Çaig laboratories sells a variety of enhancers, with DeOxit, Preservit as their main tradenames, which are easily available (try Radio Shack for instance). Some are cleaners only, try to understand the usage notes to find which are the enhancers.
I got a few bottles, sprays, concoctions. Been a while since I used my stabilant. I just used some non residue cleaner on a MAF sensor. Depends how get down and dirty I need to go. What I most use these days is CRC lube which is an enhancer. It's cheap and available. I also got tubes of caigs concentrated items.
Greg
Had to mention, using the red tube extension works well, in that you can get small amounts, and it foams as it comes flowing easily into components.
Greg
Well... CRC 2-26 is advertised as a multi-purpose lubricant and moisture-eliminator. I'm not sure I'd consider it a "contact enhancer", except incidentally.
According to the MSDS, its ingredients are petroleum distillates, mineral oil, a bit of sulfonic acids (which I suspect provide some detergent action), some (2-methoxymethylethoxy) propanol (appears to be a glycol ether, used as a solvent), and propellants.
Not terribly different from WD-40... probably flushes and cleans a bit better due to the solvents and surfactants.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
,
I would describe it as a little thicker than wd-40. The front of the can shows an electrical connection, and says improves electrical properties. Plastic safe.
Greg
"Daniel Prince"
** Such products only work if you believe in them.Like crystals and pyramids etc.
.... Phil
"Arfa Daily"
** FFS Arthur - HAVE A LOOK on Ebay or Google under the OP's heading.The concoctions being offered are all SNAKE OIL !!
Contact cleaner /lubricant products ( like WD40 ) are NOT the issue here.
... Phil
Nothing noticed, but after changing plugs and wires and cleaning, hope to increase mpg. I disconnected it on one car and it idled better. Had problems with manifold.
Greg
Some time ago I had a Conrac color video monitor out of a TV station. it had a LOT of Molex or AMP Mate-n-lock connectors in it, with tin-plated contacts. There was HORRIBLE green goo growing all over the contacts, and it made the monitor unreliable. I can only assume somebody at the station had a pencant to apply some sort of "contact enhancer" to everything, but it sure made a mess of this unit. I don't know what brand they used. I've always been leery of that type of stuff, but at least in one case, whatever they did sure backfired. (Not that I'm any fan of stock Molex or Mate-n-lock connectors, either!)
Jon
Yeah, I really agree with you on this, Phil!
Jon
Well, the MOST amazing coincidence is that the people who "lap up" this stuff are the SAME people with the gold-plated welding cables for their 50 W tube amps! What are the chances???
Jon
I originally bought the Tweek because Jerry Pournelle recommended it in his column in Byte magazine. Has any magazine published objective, scientific tests of Tweek, DeoxIT Gold or any other contact enhancers?
-- When a cat sits in a human's lap both the human and the cat are usually happy. The human is happy because he thinks the cat is sitting on him/her because it loves her/him. The cat is happy because it thinks that by sitting on the human it is dominant over the human.
I have done a little testing myself. Just take some flat metal and some leads, VOM. Scrape around bare metal vs applied lubes or whatever. I get some positive results vs dry metal.
Greg
The advertising and marketing DOES look like snake-oil, but there's some real technology behind it. A small amount of residue contains a liquid semiconductor, which is the active part of Stabilant-22 and DeOxit Shield S. NATO stocks the stuff (NSN 6850-01-435-6479 is the stock number) for aviation and other high-reliability electronics applications.
The original patents have run out (issued about 1970), so the sales literature no longer touts this very real electrical contact improvement.
There's no question they improve the contact. The issue is whether they improve the sound. I find this unlikely. However, all the audio connections in my system have been treated with Caig Red and Gold products (as appropriate). Why shouldn't they be clean?
When I worked for RCA at NOAA, one of the computers had problems with the edge contacts on its memory board. No amount of conventional cleaning helped, but Cramolin Red fixed it -- for a while (several days).
** Pseudo technology.
Just like all the asinine SHIT you spew.
.... Phil
The red is (I believe) the same as DeOxit, and is a cleaner only. Clean doesn't last. The blue (PreserVit or somesuch) had the lubricant/enhancer component. That (blue) has now been renamed DeOxit Shield.
If you must, Cramolin, if you can find it. Caig red is you can't.
Or you can mix your own, as I've done (mostly for curiosity). Whatever commercial product you select, look on the MSDS sheet for the ingredients. Favorite cleaner mix so far is naphtha (Coleman camp fuel) and a tiny amount of oleic acid (available on eBay). I don't use a "contact enhancer" as I don't think it's possible. See below.
However, there's a problem. If you think about it, the idea behind a contact CLEANER is to remove any oxide (or sulfide) coating on the contacts. That's usually done with a weak acid, such as oleic acid or vinegar. Both will eventually attack copper, so it has to be followed by a water and alcohol rinse. However, that leaves the contact material again exposed to attack by various aromatics, which will soon return the contacts to their previous oxidized state. Enter the contact preservative, which is just a coating of oil or grease. You can do as well with almost any thin grease. However, note that all of them are non-conductive, so adding grease increases the contact resistance slightly. If allowed to mix with dirt, it becomes an insulating layer, which makes things even worse than just dirty contacts. Leave off the grease and high pressure contacts, such as on some older rotary switches, will eventually gouge their way through the plating material and expose the base metal, which will promptly oxidize or tarnish. Of course, all this applies only to tin and silver contacts, but not gold, which doesn't tarnish, oxidize, or require lubrication. Wash with your favorite cleaner or solvent, and leave the gold alone.
I use a syringe. The pressurized cans with the red nozzle usually consume far too much lube and always make a mess, which is the plan so that you'll use up the can quicker. With a small syringe, it's much easier to get into tight areas, and dispense a controlled amount. I have a small supply of medical glass syringes with *BLUNT* tips. Also available on eBay). Plastic syringes with a rubber plunger seals will work, but are eventually attacked by solvents.
More on cleaners:
Drivel: In a past life, I used to design marine radios. Corrosion and corruption (fungus growth) were constant problems. The conventional wisdom was to select the contact plating correctly (i.e. gold is only for "dry" contacts, silver if it carries power), and to not give the crud anything to stick to (i.e. no lubes, oils, greases, or goo). The contacts could look fairly oxidized and disgusting, but as long as the fairly tiny contact surfaces were clean, there would not be a problem. Standard procedure for factory repair was to hose the exposed contacts (rotary switches and relays) with solvent to remove the contact cleaner grease residue deposited by the dealer.
Coax connectors were another problem. Some brilliant marketing person decided that filling the coax connector with "dielectric" silicon grease would make it waterproof. That works, but it also put a layer of insulating silicon grease on the contact surfaces of the connector. No water in the connector, but also no connection. Cleaning out the grease completely is difficult.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.