[Milsurplus] contact cleaners

[aGEnuine Ham]

Group:

Follow-up on contact cleaners.  Wayne Hall asked a question which is a
legitimate concern about cleaners and contact enhancers.  Are they
conductive?  As far as I have been able to read, and my crude
experiments, NO.  Apparently they displace whatever keeps contacts from
making good contact, and permit good, metal to metal contact when the
switch or whatever needs it, but on an insulator, they are
non-conductive.  I have not run HIGH voltage (>300V) tests, nor have I
tried to measure dielectric constant, but in applications ranging from
some  low voltage, low power, battery operated microelectronics, to
vacuum tube receivers (AR-88 and 51J-4 to name a couple of real switch
eaters), I have experienced no problems which would lead me to believe
the contact enhancer is conductive.

Another note.  This is likely unnecessary, but after cleaning contacts 
with Deoxit, I usually bathe them in lots of alcohol or Freon to wash all
the corrosion and cleaner residue away before applying the enhancer.  I
would be more concerned about residue from the contaminants being
conductive than the enhancer.

Has anyone ever seen a good treatise on this subject?  Someone needs to
spend the time documenting the process and write it up.

73,
George
W5VPQ

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