Suggestions for cleaning hundreds of socketed chips?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10 Sep 2008 at 20:52, Josh Dersch wrote:

> The aluminum sheet idea is great, except that on this board there's 
> really no room to slide it in -- the chips are close enough together 
> that I can barely get a small flat-blade screwdriver between them to pry 
> (gently). 

You could also try making an extractor that's modeled after forceps--
a short horizontal "L" section on each leg, just long enough to clear 
the space between chips.  Some of the pins on these old ceramic 
packages are very fragile.
 
> And I reseated all the chips the other night (very carefully).  Going 
> through with a continuity tester on the first couple rows reveals that 
> about every other chip has at least one pin that's not making good 
> contact... this is going to be an ordeal :).  The sockets themselves are 
> going to be a problem -- they have gold contacts (I _think_) but the 
> actual socket doesn't expose any accessible metal surface -- the pins go 
> through a hole (that's just barely larger than a pin) in the plastic 
> sheath and beneath that are the contacts.  So getting contact cleaner in 
> there is going to be an interesting problem.

DeoxIT comes in an aerosol form, which should allow for easy 
penetration.

The concern here is that with abrasive methods, you're also rubbing 
off the gold plating with the corrosion.  That could mean some misery 
down the road.

None of this may help you if the sockets have degraded to the point 
where the contacts have deteriorated and cannot make good contact 
even after cleaning.  But a chemical cleaner such as DeoxIT is 
probably the best way to approach the problem of dirty/corroded 
contacts.

Cheers,
Chuck