>On 05/24/2011 12:08 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> >>cleaning the dust out with vacuum and Q-tips might help.
> >>Compressed air is fast, but creates static electricity.
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 05:00:24PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> As to using compressed air to clean:
> 1. never use air from typical air compressor - too much
> dirt/oil/water/crud/etc.
> 2. canned compressed air (preferably dry nitrogen) probably OK:
> a. I guess cans with plastic tubes to direct stream *might*
> theoretically produce static charged stream.
> b. My personal experience is using an all metal
> nozzle/trigger assembly attached to a metal canister
> while I was connected to equipment ground with an
> anti-static wrist band. {I also tended to work on
> equipment for which a fingerprint was a short circuit.}
> I would probably be more concerned about the brush and how it was
> used.
Even more details - when I worked in a semiconductor lab, we
used a dry nitrogen jet with a metal nozzle, inside of which
was a largish chunk of radioactive Americium 243. Am243 is an
alpha emitter which ionizes molecule-thin tracks in the air
inside the nozzle, and paradoxically removes the static
(shorts it out). Good tool. Requires a purple trefoil and
a D.O.E. permit, displayed in a class-10-clean transparent
box on the clean room wall near the nitrogen spigot.
However, I doubt that John has a clean high pressure air
source, or even canned air, though he might have a shop air
compressor and be erroniously tempted to use it. He probably
has a relatively feeble vacuum cleaner, which I hope to steer
him towards. There are proper cleaning brushes, which I
doubt he has, and Q-tips, which leave large lint. A vacuum
cleaner helps with Q-tip lint as well as the dust. He may
not have a good inspection magnifier, so whatever he uses
as a scrubber should leave visible (not tiny) lint.
Engineering is about making do with what's available, and
providing simple instructions to the worker bees so they
do the job "least badly". My main concern is that John
is clever, and might try some of the same superficially
plausible but disasterous improvisations that I've tried
over the decades. Those could result in a permanently
dead monitor, or a permanently dead John.
All that was packed into my two lines. John is far
less resistant to reading than most production workers
I know, but over-simplified and clear is better than
wordy and unread. All who suffer through my prolix
emails wish I would remember this more often.
Keith
--
Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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