OT: Cleaning up vintage equipment

Ed Skinner All Messages By This Member #19635 OFF-TOPIC - Skip as you may wish. I've acquired a 1950s oscilloscope. The exterior is cleaning up nicely with Simple Green and a toothbrush. But the inside is baked-on dust and fluff. Compressed air isn't cutting it. I don't see any paper parts so I'm willing to risk some kind of spray. What do you think? Old school potentiometer cleaner? Flux remover spray? Automotive carb cleaner? — Ed Skinner, ed@..., , 480-492-7664
kz6oscar #19636 Before I invested too much time, I’d clean it up enough to power it up and see if it’s worth the effort. You’ll have bring it up slowly on a Variac to reform the power supply caps. Then I’d soak the crud with rubbing alcohol and hit it again with brushes. Stay away from strong solvents, you don’t know what they will dissolve. Good luck Logan toggle quoted message Show quoted text On Sep 30, 2019, at 3:43 PM, Ed Skinner <ed@...> wrote: OFF-TOPIC - Skip as you may wish. I've acquired a 1950s oscilloscope. The exterior is cleaning up nicely with Simple Green and a toothbrush. But the inside is baked-on dust and fluff. Compressed air isn't cutting it. I don't see any paper parts so I'm willing to risk some kind of spray. What do you think? Old school potentiometer cleaner? Flux remover spray? Automotive carb cleaner? — Ed Skinner, ed@..., , 480-492-7664
Eric KE6US #19637 Good advice to stay away from strong solvents. Carb cleaner and brake cleaner are usually recycled solvent mixtures that can vary considerably from batch to batch. I restored about a dozen 5 tube ac/dc AM radios several years ago. Nothing in particular always worked. I switched off between several household cleaners with inconsistent results. The only thing that worked consistently was scotch-brite pads and elbow grease. Even then, metal corrosion under the layer of crud makes it impossible to get a cosmetically decent surface. Eric KE6US toggle quoted message Show quoted text On 9/30/2019 5:52 PM, kz6oscar wrote: Before I invested too much time, I’d clean it up enough to power it up and see if it’s worth the effort. You’ll have bring it up slowly on a Variac to reform the power supply caps. Then I’d soak the crud with rubbing alcohol and hit it again with brushes. Stay away from strong solvents, you don’t know what they will dissolve. Good luck Logan On Sep 30, 2019, at 3:43 PM, Ed Skinner <ed@...> wrote: OFF-TOPIC - Skip as you may wish. I've acquired a 1950s oscilloscope. The exterior is cleaning up nicely with Simple Green and a toothbrush. But the inside is baked-on dust and fluff. Compressed air isn't cutting it. I don't see any paper parts so I'm willing to risk some kind of spray. What do you think? Old school potentiometer cleaner? Flux remover spray? Automotive carb cleaner? — Ed Skinner, ed@..., , 480-492-7664

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OT: Cleaning up vintage equipment