Deoxit vs "tuner cleaner"

[wa2dtw]

These seem to be entirely different products.

Which is best for cleaning a rolling coil on a Heath antenna tuner?
The plates of the tuning capacitors?

Which is best for cleaning a bandswitch on an SX42?
A dirty volume control potentiometer?

Thanks and 73
Steve WA2DTW

[W3NP]

A tuner cleaner basically cleans and degreases without leaving any residue (a solvent). I use a product by Chemtronics called Tun-O-Wash. It works well for general cleaning of just about anything that is in an old radio and I have never had any negative effects from it's use.

De-Oxit is an excellent lubricating contact cleaner (without solvent). I NEVER spray it on anything, especially a receiver bandswitch. After removing the obvious crud, grease, dirt, etc from any rotary switch with a brush, compressed air, Tun-O-Wash, etc, I apply a tiny amount of Deoxit on a small tool (screwdriver blade) and then just put a small dab on the switch rotor and then run it around a few times.
Contact cleaner sprayed on phenolic switch wafers can and in most cases will, cause problems. It soaks into the wafer material.

With any cleaner, remember that the crud that it washes out, has to go somewhere, and that dirty residue can often be more troublesome than original film of dirt and oxidation if it collects in the wrong place.

I have never had any problems with De-Oxit in a potentiometer, but I only use a tiny burst.

A roller inductor would best be cleaned with just a solvent cleaner - or not at all.

Be very careful with the bandswitch on the SX-42.

[WQ9E]

Mark provides great advice!  Even if it doesn't expand the wafers the residue from tuner cleaner (most of which also contain lube) can create lots of problems.  One SX-62 that came across my bench had tons of cleaner sprayed into the switch; apparently the previous owner had tried to cure the problems caused by leaky black beauties with cleaner/lube.  The stuff saturated everything including the coils and threw all of the calibrations way off; it was so bad the oscillator would die about half way up the highest frequency range.  I finally ended up using some cleaner designed for cleaning the commutators on motors and that cut through the residue and cleaned it up.  I then re-lubed the mechanical part of the switch and that SX-62 is my office radio at work.  In terms of aggravation that was a very expensive $10 SX-62 bought at the close of a hamfest.

I have read cautions about using this stuff on ceramic switches because it can remove the surface coating used on some switches designed to seal the ceramic.  Beyond that it will definitely attract residue and lead to arcing and zorching effects on ceramic switches subject to HV.

A last comment on the stuff.  A friend was given a TS-520 that had been left in a house by a previous resident.  It had dirty wipers on the VFO so he pulled the foil seal form the VFO housing and sprayed liberally with tuner cleaner and it did take care of the dirty wipers.  However, he immediately found the calibration and tracking were way off so he tried to adjust those.  I wish I had been there to watch because, of course what happened was there was so much cleaner between the capacitor plates it provided a far different dielectric constant than air.  He called me on the phone for help and explained the calibration kept changing (as the spray gradually disappeared).  I use an air hose to blow the stuff out of the plates and recalibrated and all was well but he really managed to mess the tracking up while trying to recalibrate the "liquid filled variable cap".  I think the misuse of this product creates around 99% of the market demand for it.

[K4TLJ]

I use Bill Turner's  "CEASE & DESIST" CONTACT CLEANER applied with a 'cu tip' or screw driver tip. It is much cheaper than 'DeOxit' and works just as well in my opinion.
http://www.dialcover.com/components.html

Or you can buy the oleic acid and mix it with naptha to make your own.

[w2tgr]

De-Oxit or alcohol for cleaning.   I contacted Palstar about what they use. The sent me a sample to use on my AT2K..AND their grease formula.....    3 parts graphite 1 part lithium grease....that should help with the confusion   73 Terry W2TGR

[W1RKW]

need to clean any over spray of DeOxIt on anything that has HV on it. It will develop a carbon track over time especially on phenolic and destroy it.

the Caig contact cleaning and preserving system is really a 2 part system.  Ideally, DeOxIt should be cleaned off once the oxidation is removed from the contact surface then followed up with one of Caigs preservative solutions i.e. DeOxIt Shield (their blue stuff).

[Opcom]

Very interesting topic!

BTW the link to "http://www.dialcover.com/components.html" is 404. "http://www.dialcover.com/" is working but I did not see chemicals.

So the idea of this topic seems to be to:
 - 'wash' a receiver band switch or a RF amp band switch with a solvent that leaves no residue.
 - 'spot apply' something like de-ox-it lube and cleaner to contact surfaces only.

Some questions come up due to previous work of others on equipment:

What to use to relubricate things that might have got spray-cleaned off, such as switch bearings and bezel bushings? Some say lithium grease, some a drop of electric motor oil, etc. What about petroleum jelly or some other greases that don't eat plastic?

What is the difference between Caig Laboratories Deoxit and GC Electronics De-Ox-Id?

GC has some of those products like brushes, and also needle applicator bottles, riser bottles, etc., which are useful to spot-place whatever you want to dispense. These are very useful for putting 1 drop into a tiny control, etc and really avoids making a mess.
http://www.gcelectronics.com/order/SubCatPDF/accessories%20Circuit%20boards%2058-64.pdf
http://www.gcelectronics.com under /chemicals /accessories