[rescue] Motherboard cleaning..

[Mark Brown]

On 5/16/2013 12:36 PM, Barry Callahan wrote:
> We actually have a dishwasher in our shop for the express purpose of 
> washing PCBs, post assembly. In our case, they're cleaning excess flux 
> and removing soldermask paste. (for preventing vias from being 
> soldered when using a wave-solderer) They use rubber bands to hold the 
> boards in place so they don't get jostled around.
>
> If the board is really bad, you might put it in for a full wash + 
> rinse cycle ** DO NOT USE DETERGENT ** and use the high-temp wash & 
> rinse settings if your dishwasher is so equipped.
>
> The alcohol bath may not be a bad idea, but it's not something we do 
> here. To dry out the boards, we actually stick 'em in an environmental 
> chamber and bake 'em at ~60 celsius (140 F) for a couple hours. Your 
> oven's "warm" setting would probably work just fine.
>
>
>
I used to work with a fella that worked at Honeywell (Keyboards).  I 
think he was a line manager for the electronics side of the keyboard.  
There was a quality issue with the boards coming from that plant and I 
seem to recall the discussion was around cleanliness. (our conversation 
about this was over twenty years ago...).   The remediation was to 
install a dishwasher on the line - and that was the solution to the 
problem.  I figured it was for the reasons listed above by Barry.

And to the OP (Christopher - I think....) , don't be in a hurry to fire 
the system back up after the wash cycle.  Put it on the shelf for a 
month and forget about it for a while until is is most certainly dry.

Good luck!  Let us know the results....

/M