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Blue Slime on Power Cord Prongs?

I see some of that corrosion on electrical devices in a room with pumps, heater and chemicals for a swimming pool. Maybe the clorine causing in this case.
 
Maybe? Both items I have with the slime I got from second hand shops. Since I'm not the original owner, the items past life is moot. In my ownership it hasn't been the case.
 
We get it all the time on moulded two pin vintage plug/leads. You can clean it, but it will return. Cut it off and put on a new plug as you really have no idea how bad the termination to the pin inside is now.

Then there's the plugs that go sticky and 'sweat' clear liquid. We have found Kawasaki and to a lesser extent, Hanai Japanese leads the worst. In fact, I have an ongoing experiment of a plug in a sealed jar to see where the 'liquid' comes from. A breakdown of the PVC and likely reactions with the copper IMO.
 
savatage1973 said:
There probably was grease on the whole blade (at first), but plugging it into a receptacle just pushed the excess down to the base of the prongs. Just wipe it off, or if you want to get really "clean", use some solvent to remove the residue.
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I agree, clean it off with alcohol or whatever you like and use it. But i would unplug it in about six months to check if it happened again. Just looks like simple copper corrosion to me.
 
triode17 said:
...Just looks like simple copper corrosion to me...
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It's more complicated than that and it has zero to do with grease. Trust me, I have literally hundreds of two pin moulded leads on gear that have done it. Even in their boxes. Even brand new (NOS) ones in bags. Even NOS gear that has never been plugged in.

Only certain brands do it. Kawasaki, Hanai and Hitachi moulded ones are three, there are others, but no Chinese, Australian, English or American ones have done it on our gear. Kawasaki and Hanai were used on tons of Japanese HiFi through the 80s. It's a chemical reaction with the plastics, the metal and whatever gases off.
 
I've been using blue slime for years. It improves sound quality dramatically. The first time I used it, my wife got mad at me for buying a new stereo. She said it was like someone popped a cork and the music came out.

Skeptics tell me it doesn't make a difference. That's fine. For those of us that now better, a little blue slime makes listening great again
 
I've been futzing with a circa 1963 Elac 10 for a while and that blue/green coloration permeated the cartridge lead's insulation. No slime, just infused discolouration. Observing the lead's jackets as far away from the cartridge ends as possible showed what colour they actually were originally.

It made the blue, green & yellow leads nearly indistinguishable but the red still did look red - sort of.
 
I have seen it on an early 1980s Black and Decker electric drill, and numerous 1980s Leviton extension cords.
 
It's snake oil (anyone read that article in Stereophile yet?)

On a related note, I remember back in the 80's when Radio Shack got a bunch of speaker wire with clear dielectric. One conductor was silver in color, the other copper. After a short time, one of the conductors developed an interesting green patina along the length of the wire...
 
biscuithead said:
Grease at electric connections is pretty common... but in a residential receptacle... no.
Perhaps it is de-ox... the stuff we use in a copper/Aluminum splice (it inhibits galvanic reaction in two dissimilar metals)
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Clean the oxidation and do this ^^^ , we do it everyday. Either No-Ox or even De-electric grease from the auto parts store.
 
Good to know I'm not the only one who has had the blue green slime on electronics. A new name for it popped out my head...."Electro Jizz".
Electro Jizz: a biproduct substance derived from chemical reaction of metal (copper) and plastic (pvc); associated with electronics; usually a blue/green'ish color; waxy; oxidation; degradation.
 
robgmn said:
It's snake oil (anyone read that article in Stereophile yet?)

On a related note, I remember back in the 80's when Radio Shack got a bunch of speaker wire with clear dielectric. One conductor was silver in color, the other copper. After a short time, one of the conductors developed an interesting green patina along the length of the wire...
Click to expand...

Had the same thing happen with some bulk speaker wire of a very similar description that I sourced from Home Depot back in the late 1980's. They were selling this bulk "speaker wire" from large spools, and reportedly the buzz was that this wire was alleged to be "the same" as Monster Cable but much less expensive due to Home Depot's "bulk" purchase. It took less than a year for the green crud to migrate over a foot up the length of this wire. Got rid of that junk immediately and have not even contemplated generic cheap wire ever since.
 
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