Off Topic: Compressors and Computers

Sorry I snipped it; a small amount of residual dust is harmless. The only place you want to make sure you have no thick dustbunnies is on the power supply heat-sinks, the processor heatsink, fan blades and any ventilation openings.

The rest of the system operates at temperatures that aren't affected by a small amount of dust. It doesn't need to be operating room clean. Rephrase, the lack of operating room cleanliness doesn't have an effect on MTBF.

The IBM big-iron (S/360, S/370, 3080, through Z-series) have filters that prevent dust migration into the system in the first place. As did the Burroughs systems.

Using a computer vacuum is better anyway, as compressed air by itself just returns the dust to the evironment, from whence it will reestablish itself in the computer.

scott

those as well,

It's a good thing my pea seas are not mainframes! It's out to the shop, blow the fur balls out with the compressor and than back to the computer room. No residual dust in the house.

I've had more electronics failures from bulging/leaking electrolytic caps anyway.

That's nice. It doesn't change what I said (which you snipped) about having attempted (on many occasions) to fully clean out a computer with canned air, having it do an incomplete job, then getting just as much or more dust out of the system with an air compressor blow gun.

Incidentally, I've been in the industry almost as long as you have, five years of which were spent as an IBM CE where the only tools we had in the field to clean out a machine were canned air and a vacuum cleaner. We could *always* do a better job of cleaning out the machines if we were able to take them from the customer's site back to the office where we had an air compressor. ============================================================================= Of course you could. Those little cans of air are very little better than nothing. At work, we would take them out into the shop (machine shop) and use the shop air supply to blow them out. Shop air was at 120 psi so you didn't get any closer than about three feet. I do the same at home (90 psi). I was over to someone's house a while back working on their machine. It needed cleaning out. He handed me a can of air. I tried that and then told him that was little better than nothing. He had a leaf blower though so we did get it clean.

I use a blowgun on my compressor, too. I have a little pancake that I use for small house projects with the nailguns, etc. 30 psi is good. Canned air freezes things sometimes, and I'm not sure that's good.

Steve

FWIW, don't waste your money on canned air. One of these things does as good a job and never gets empty. I got it to blow the dust off the sensor in my camera but it works fine on computers too.

"Mike Marlow" wrote in news:1553c$4f7c2a37$4b75eb81$ snipped-for-privacy@ALLTEL.NET:

I've got some old circuit boards with surface mount components... maybe it's time for an experiment.

Hm... a little googling found a mini-heated torch. It uses compressed air and heat to melt the solder on SMD components (and blow it away) so the parts can be salvaged. (or maybe the board.)

Puckdropper

Puckdropper wrote in news:4f7c4e2b$0$521$c3e8da3$ snipped-for-privacy@news.astraweb.com:

A quick experiment showed no movement at all with the SMD components. Compressor was set to 90 PSI (I forgot the 125 psi part) and I had a blow gun with "pool floatie" nozzle on the end. Air was applied to the side and front of the component, and nothing blew off or even looked like it was moving.

However, application of heat with a heat gun set to high (which will melt solder and remove components itself) and the compressor set to about 20 psi had excellent results removing components from the circuit board. A bunch of LEDs came off in less than a minute (through-hole) and the smd components came off even easier. Trouble was they'd blow away with the force of the compressor.

In my opinion, an air compressor is not going to be sufficient to blow chips off a cold circuit board. However, socketed ICs, pin and header connections, shorting jumpers, and maybe even some switches may be negatively affected by the compressed air. If sufficiently high heat enters the equation, however, the force of the compressed air can easily blow the solder away from the component and cause it to fly off.

You guys may have inadvertently sold me on another tool... I gotta see how much those hot air soldering pencils cost.

Puckdropper

Taking the PC box to a compressor takes care of the noise /dust in a office issue.

A portable air storage tank($20) takes care of the noise in a office issue and avoids needing extra lengths of hose when used around the house.....if you don't have a compressor to fill it, borrow some air from a friend who does. For little jobs it is also easier to carry around than even most small compressors

When using a compressor or tank to clean your PC make sure you hold the fan blades still so you don't spin out the bearings....usually a screw driver works fine.

Rod

To each his own, but that sound like a strangle place to put a screwdriver. How about just holding them with your finger (s)?

A soft plastic wand (for the princesses) or wooden popsicle stick would be a lot safer around electronics, boys and girls.

-- Life is an escalator: You can move forward or backward; you can not remain still. -- Patricia Russell-McCloud

Except you are doing this with the power DISCONNECTED. And HOPEFULLY before strting to blow the air. Sticking a screwdriver into a rapidly spinning PC fan WILL remove blades.

You are going to get your finger into the powersupply enough to stop the fan? You must have pretty skinny fingers, or extremely long nails.

A small metal screwdriver tip could take out a thin trace on a mobo in a split second. It could also scrap off a SM cap or resistor in a heartbeat.

And speaking of non-metallic screwdrivers, who has used a Gecko G540 drive before? What driver do you use to get down to those buried screws they use for motor optimization? I think they're trimpots.

I don't think it's the power supply fan that is under discussion above.

Not only that, I ground myself before sticking my hands in the case!

How much dirt you have in your computer depends on the environment. Some of my customers have so much dust inside the box, that, upon seeing the cloud of white smoke generated by the exhaust from the Hoover, you'd think the computer just elected a new Pope.

Both the PS fan and the CPU fan require care - as does the fan on a high-end video card. The PS fan is the one most often damaged because it IS out of sight, and they PS tends to accumulate dust

If it is spinning from compressed air and you even TOUCH the tip with a screwdriver, the fan is HISTORY. Running as designed they are hardly "rapidly spinning". - but I've seen them shatter even under their own power when someone who will remain nameless stuck a screwdriver in to stop the fan to see if it was the PS fan that was noisy.

If I can find the right size shrink, I'll cover a tiny steel driver I already have, I guess. Thanks for the tip.

-- Life is an escalator: You can move forward or backward; you can not remain still. -- Patricia Russell-McCloud