Handheld vs detergent

Tristar

Tristar

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Tristar
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So here is an interesting situation. I had my handheld radio sitting on my passenger seat. I decided to go do laundry and also put my laundry detergent in the passenger seat. I didn't notice until later but the cap leaked and there is laundry detergent all over my nice handheld. Any ideas on how I could clean that off?
 
What's the brand of handheld?

Some of them are waterproof, some are water resistant. Depending on the ratings, you may just be able to wash it off (I'd remove the battery first).
 
Damp cloth, lots of damp clothes and let dry thoroughly before use.
 
I've cleaned up a number of Amateur Radio HT's over the years that had soda or whatever dumped on them...

Water is your friend, but you want to try hard not to get it inside. If for no other reason in that you don't want to push the "offending substance" further in.

Electricity is not your friend. Remove the battery. Careful though, sometimes the seal around the battery is part of the "waterproof-ness".

Isopropyl Alchohol can also be used to clean things up but you want pure stuff... not nail polish remover (acetone plus other stuff) or anything like that. Walgreens used to sell the relatively pure stuff. 99%. Nowadays you have to hunt around a bit for that. Stay away from "Rubbing" Alcohol... it's typically a mix of alcohol, acetone, and water. And you're trying to get rid of water... but I've successfully used "91%" in a pinch cleaning up gear.

The purer you can get the stuff, the better... if it weren't for the display and some capacitors that aren't sealed well, and possible reactions with some types of plastics/rubber buttons, you could just drop a device in 99% isopropyl bath and get the water out. :)

Here's how I usually clean up a radio...

- Start by just getting bulk off with rags/towels/paper towels. Get out some Q-Tips and get it out of nooks and crannies, etc. The HARD part is keyboards... you're not going to get everything out of those buttons without disassembly, but you can get most of it.

- Remove battery when practical.

- Warm water carefully trying to keep most of it on the outside of the radio... look at the direction of mic/speaker slot openings, etc... try not to squirt water THROUGH them, but more ACROSS them... don't dunk the whole radio in water, of course... wet rags that aren't "drippy" often work well at this stage.

- Once you have the radio "clean" ... now you may want to consider disassembly... especially if "stuff" got inside. Careful removal of outer cover and looking around for signs of where the "stuff" got in, and Q-Tips, small soft absorbent rags, and very little water, or the above-mentioned alcohol work well at this stage.

- If there's signs that the "stuff" got on the electronics inside, you want to get it off. You might want to discuss with an electronics tech before pouring anything on the circuit board however.

- Once you think you got it all out of the nooks, crannies, outside, inside... wherever... RESIST the temptation to power the radio back up. You want it dry, dry, dry before you put the battery back on. (Ask me how I know... ha...)

- Some folks use the "bag of rice" trick... as long as there aren't a bunch of little nooks and crannies to catch the rice in... you can put an electronic device inside a bag of dry rice and seal up the baggie and the rice will "draw" moisture. There's also of course, those commercially made silica gel bags you find in most electronics purchased from Asia these days, that also do a great job of sucking up moisture. Leave the radio in the baggie for a day or so. You want it as dry as possible BEFORE putting it in the baggie, anyway... but the baggie trick can help, especially in humid climates.

(Here in Colorado, we're so dry all the time, I just leave the battery off the radio, maybe even the case off, and set it aside on the workbench for a few hours... a full day and it'll be bone-dry.)

- Some folks use canned air or even a rate-limited attachment to a shop air compressor to remove the moisture... just have to be really careful with it... the speed of the air at the nozzle is high enough I've seen components ripped off of circuit boards. Also I've seen compressed air more than once shove the water into the cover of the LCD screen. LCD's and water don't get along, and looking at water spots on the inside of the LCD cover for the rest of the life of the radio... isn't nice. So think about where you're blowing the water if you go that route.

There's some options... I've both fixed stuff, and "not fixed stuff" (or they were already fried and no amount of clean-up was going to fix them)... with the above. :) :) :)

Coke is EVIL on radios. At least you're just dealing with soap...
 
At least you only dumped detergent on it & didn't run it through the washer.

I did a flight connection in DFW on Sunday & ran across a colleague on the flight that was headed to DC for a Monday meeting. She had run her blackberry through the laundry (washer & dryer). Dead as the proverbial doornail. Worse, the company has eliminated our RSA keys and replaced them with - you guessed it - Blackberry apps.

My experience with detergent is that it becomes really difficult to remove once it dries - takes a LOT of water in fabric, and may take other solvents on hard surfaces. Clean that puppy ASAP. It can also stain surfaces, depending on the type of detergent.
 
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denverpilot said:
Isopropyl Alchohol can also be used to clean things up but you want pure stuff... not nail polish remover (acetone plus other stuff) or anything like that. Walgreens used to sell the relatively pure stuff. 99%. Nowadays you have to hunt around a bit for that. Stay away from "Rubbing" Alcohol... it's typically a mix of alcohol, acetone, and water. And you're trying to get rid of water... but I've successfully used "91%" in a pinch cleaning up gear.

<SNIP>
Coke is EVIL on radios. At least you're just dealing with soap...
Click to expand...

Just one nit- I've yet to find "rubbing alcohol" in the USA that contains acetone. I buy the stuff when I need to run a chromatography system outside of a lab. It is usually 70% 2-propanol in water, rarely 99% 2-propanol. I've seen "rubbing alcohol" in Nebraska that contains ethanol; I don't know what they use as a denaturant and this might be acetone.

The coke has phosphoric acid which isn't good for stuff (aside from the sugars and flavors that make it sticky).

I otherwise agree with everything else with the added suggestion to use distilled water since tap water here in Nebraska is full of lime.

I once dropped a digital camera into Buzzard's Bay many years ago. I took it apart in the lab (Woods Hole) and washed everything with the lab DI (de-ionized; for our purposes, same as distilled) water and the camera worked fine for many years thereafter. Last month I got sodium benzoate all over a computer board (Design FAIL- never put solvent lines above electronics!)- washed it off with lab DI water and she be good!
 
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It's an Icom, it's dry, and decided to to sneak it's way into the edges of the keys before I could catch it.
 
Icom- those are water resistant, not water proof. Supposed to be good against "water splashed from any direction"
 
Tristar said:
So here is an interesting situation. I had my handheld radio sitting on my passenger seat. I decided to go do laundry and also put my laundry detergent in the passenger seat. I didn't notice until later but the cap leaked and there is laundry detergent all over my nice handheld. Any ideas on how I could clean that off?
Click to expand...

Remove battery and use a damp rag frequently rinsing it to wipe the surfaces until clean, shouldn't take long.

EDIT: saw you had it in the keys, use a dripping damp cloth on the key face with the keys facing down. Rub it around a bit and just set it on the cloth for a few minutes. Then let everything sit until well dry.

Rinsing should be ok, but I have seen it go bad before.
 
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You might want to get a spray can of "electronic cleaner" and hose the radio down with that after wiping up any visible detergent. Read the label on the cleaner to see if it might harm a clear plastic window and/or keep it away from the display. IIRC most such cleaners are safe for plastics.
 
gismo said:
You might want to get a spray can of "electronic cleaner" and hose the radio down with that after wiping up any visible detergent. Read the label on the cleaner to see if it might harm a clear plastic window and/or keep it away from the display. IIRC most such cleaners are safe for plastics.
Click to expand...

The only problem with the spray can stuff, is that it usually ends up pushing the stuff you don't want on or in the radio, inside via any path available. I only use it sparingly if the direction of "flow" would be pushing stuff inside. Otherwise, I'll take the case off and go the other direction.

Also be careful... this has mostly gone away since I was a kid and "contact cleaner" for balky mechanical switches was popular, and seen on the same shelf as "electronics cleaner"... but some cleaners (usually labeled "contact" cleaner, as mentioned above) have stuff in them to lubricate mechanical contacts. Don't grab the wrong can of spray "stuff".

Water and Isopropyl Alcohol are also a lot cheaper than the aerosol can stuff.

(Good point on the distilled water too, I forget that water "downstream" of here isn't as free of "stuff" as our tap water is. We have a lot of minerals, but they tend to stay suspended unless you're boiling standing water down to bone-dry...)

Icom rigs are pretty rugged. Which model? The older "fatter" cases are damn near indestructible, and don't let much inside in rain, etc. They're not "waterproof" and don't meet any MILSPEC requirements like some Yaesu's do, but they're good.

I've seen the fat Icom case containing a different set of guts (Icom uses that case for a number of radios in a number of types of service) take an 80' fall from the top of a small tower to concrete and someone picked it up, looked at it, keyed it up, and it worked fine. That case will take a beating, and parts don't go flying off like a lot of radios that take a shock that big.
 
Did you call ICom for advice? Have you made any progress with it yet?
Have you learned any do's or don'ts that you can share with us just in case...
 
This is what Icom sent me:

Tristan,

Thank you for contacting ICOM America Technical Service Department.

By your comments it sounds like the soap was liquid soap.

The following steps are performed at your own risks.

Obviously with radios that are contaiminated the issue and cleanup might cause further damage to the unit. What would normally be done, by some experienced technicians, would be to:
Remove all power from the radio.
Disassemble the radio and wash the case carefully with water. Rinse the case carefully with distilled water.
A tooth brush is sometimes used to carefully remove debris.

On the electronics, if the soap is dry it can be blow away with air or removed with a tooth brush carefully.
Electronics, avoiding the speaker and microphone, can be flushed with distilled water and then fully dryed carefully.

Assuming no other damage has been done, then when reassembled the unit should work.


The unit if shipped to service might perform the steps above or alternatively replace any electronics that were contaminated.

Best Regards;

Fred Varian - WD5ERD
Technical Support Representative

ICOM America, Inc.
2380 116th Ave. NE
Bellevue, WA 98004
Ph. (425) 454-8155 or (800) 253-1498
Fax (425) 637-8417
 
It is comforting to see a factory response that DID NOT come from a place like wonraggedtent, India...:wink2::rofl::rofl:
 
I've had great dealings with Fred in the past. He's one of the "good guys".

He's also overloaded... I think he's one of the only Icom techs in the U.S., and my dealings with him were about something completely unrelated to Aviation Band radios... so it was a surprise to see his name here on PoA.

Icom Corporate (Japan) severely limits what the U.S. employees can say about certain products... Fred tiptoes on that line very well.
 
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