Dust Cleaning

[randyrhoads1]

For cleaning the dust off Reel To Reel Tape Decks, standard dust cleaning is fine, right? It won't mess up the circuit boards or anything?

After spraying, do I need to wipe anything off?

Any other steps or tips for cleaning in general?

thnx,
Thomas:thmbsp:

 

[Strawman]

Canned air, a vacuum cleaner with a thin tube nozzle, and soft brushes will get most of the floaty stuff out. Foam swabs & Q-tips moistened with Simple Green for a more aggressive aproach to build up on PCB's.
Use care around components like capacitors, transistors, and resistors, or you can create cold (loose) solder joints on them, creating more problems.

 

[SaSi]

I thoroughly cleaned a Revox PR99 that has most of the circuit boards plugged to a backplane board. These boards, along with the backplane, were removed and thoroughly soaked in warm tap water and hand soap. For contacts, I used an old soft toothbrush primed with soap to make sure they became shiny. Then rinsed with 95% alcohol to drain most of the water and finaly dried in the oven at 40 degrees Celcius (~100F).

I've read in the past about cleaning PCBs like this but I've also read criticism on doing this.