Caig DeoxIT products seem to be unavailable, or at least very hard to find in Canada.
The Caig products are thin silicone sprays which suffer from over-spray and creep, and DeOxIt is a cleaner, not a lubricant.
Which type of Super Lube silicone, or other lubricant, would be suitable for conductive plastic and carbon track elements that undergo tremendous use over their life?
The silicone grease with PTFE (tradename Teflon) stays in place and will for decades properly lubricate controls.
Here's some of what I previously wrote about silicone spray lubricants
versus silicone grease, slightly edited together. It may clarify some of the issues such as "dielectric grease", contact lubrication, and the creep of the silicone sprays.
Many times the resistance to turning a switch or potentiometer is not friction in the contacts but metal corrosion around the shaft. For loosening a seized shaft a silicone oil is superior to a conventional oil or penetrating oil because the Si-O-Si bond angle is readily deformable, so it moves with very low energy. The flexibility helps the silicone to better migrate into the shaft/body junction. But that flexible bond is why silicone oil suffers from creep, i.e. it migrates over the rest of the control and even onto circuit boards, and why an oil or spray oil is not the best choice if the lubricant must stay in place. Silicone grease, however, is oil plus fumed silica, so it stays in place and doesn't wander.
In the olden days a dollop of animal-fat based grease was placed in the potentiometer or switch during manufacture. Over the years that grease turned into wax. Consider the sticky sludge resulting from cooking oil in a kitchen, which is the same problem. The advantage of a thicker grease is that it stays put and tends to hold the control in place, preserving the setting. In more recent times the animal grease was replaced by a petrochemical mix, typically with the addition of a solvent to thin a waxy material; over-time that solvent evaporates, hardening the grease, plus the grease similarly polymerizes (the individual bonds in the lubricant molecules cross-link into a giant macro-molecule) into a waxy material.
A thinner lubricant does not offer the same advantages as grease, and the silicone oil used in sprays tends to creep. With a silicone spray, the lightweight petroleum carrier for the lubricant and the lubricant itself will diffuse into the existing hardened grease and soften it.
Purported "lubricants" like 3-in-1 oil are poor lubricants and poor penetrating oils. Such products consists (or at least used to consist) of a blend of high molecular weight-oils (i.e. thick) with a low molecular-weight solvent to make it flow. Think about adding a solvent like naptha, kerosene, or toluene/xylene to an oil or wax to make it more spreadable. This is why furniture wax contains a thick wax and a solvent. Once the solvent and light weight oils evaporated or polymerized the viscosity increased. The older 3-in-1 tended to polymerize into sludge. Liquid Wrench is similar, in that it is a penetrating oil consisting of a thicker oil thinned by solvent.
It is a great misconception that non-conductive grease, such as silicone grease or dielectric grease, is either not needed or will interfere with normal operation. That bit of internet nonsense endlessly recirculates. The grease layer between the contacts is vanishingly thin, and it consequently is easily and readily displaced by the wiper pressure. The term "dielectric grease" is actually a misnomer which confuses internet forum participants; the term simply means that the grease is itself non-conductive and that it prevents the entry of conductive materials, especially particulates or water. This is why such grease is used around connectors. It does not mean that the lubricant somehow "insulates" the contacts from each other. Standard practice, in fact, dictates coating external connectors exposed to the elements to reduce or even prevent corrosion by reducing the ingress of moisture, oxygen, or other corrosive gasses.
A superior, if not ideal, lubricant is a dollop of viscous silicone grease. That prevents mechanical wear, is chemically inert and non-flammable, and prevents the potentiometer from readily moving once set.
Caig's FaderLube — the old name before the Great Caig Renaming was "CaiLube MCL" (MCL stood for "Movable Contact Lubricant") — is silicone, and you'll find complaints that it gets everywhere and doesn't add sufficient viscosity. Mixer techs don't like to use it. The reason, again, is the Si-O-Si bond is very flexible and easily bends. Hence the creep.
Silicone grease is made by mixing silicone oil with fumed silica. That's the recipe by definition. All grease means, at least in the chemical vernacular, is a thickening agent dispersed in a liquid lubricant. So Superlube Silicone Lubricating Compound, which is great for lubricating moving parts, is a silicone grease which tends to stay in place. Food grade, too, in case one suffers from pica. (I do not, just in case anyone was wondering. Yeah, I know, TMI.)
Grease is commonly made from a base of animal fat, petroleum, or silicone to which a thickener, typically a soap (aka stearate), is added. Animal fat is chemically identical to many vegetable oils, by the way. Which makes sense as this is where we often acquire them.
Soap is commonly made by reacting fats with a strong base (commonly metal hydroxide of some sort). In practice this is sodium hydroxide (lye) plus fat. The historical way of making soap was to add wood ash (a source of sodium hydroxide) to liquified animal fat which had been cooked to separate out any non-fat components. (The specific gravity of the lye was checked by floating an egg in the wood-ash solution. Remember this trick when you need to make soap after the zombie apocalypse and can't find a hydrometer.)
Lithium grease replaces the sodium (or potassium) hydroxide with something like lithium hydroxide, or something similar. Calcium hydroxide and aluminum hydroxide produce other greases. The properties vary for shear strength, resistance to oxidation, etc.
Grease hardens for a few reasons. The major cause is temperature: when grease is overheated the oil can boil out and polymerize (crosslinks to form a sticky material) and the thickener congeals. If the grease is spun in a high-speed bearing the centrifugal force — yes, sigh, this is a "fictitious force" as was hammered into us in first semester physics, but it still is the simplest way to explain it — acts much like a centrifuge and thus separates the layers. The oil can oxidize, so anti-oxidants are often added. After many years the antioxidants are exhausted and the oil turns into sludge. Oxidation is the common failure for rotary controls in audio, btw. Not enough centrifugal force or heat.
Silicone grease doesn't use a soap, but it does bind the silicone oil to the thickener, which prevents creep as is the issue with ordinary silicone oil which have creep.
I have been using Super Lube for years and have suggested it for potentiometers because it stays put and makes a control which is quite viscous in movement, a very handy feature for controls which should not move once put into position. Such as with mixer consoles. Silicone grease is commonly used as a damping grease for microscopes, cameras, telescopes, and other mechanical devices. The thin spray lubricants do not have such properties.
Comes in a 3 oz tube, says "Silicone Lubricating Compound" with Syncolon (PTFE) on the label. From the manufacturer's website:
No connection to the company other than as a satisfied customer.
