Tube Socket Contact Cleaning

I use gum soft floss picks sometimes with deoxit and lots of pipe cleaners 

Tom

@tomswork I knew about pipe cleaners, but never would have thought about the floss cleaners! Thanks for the tip.

Talking about tube sockets cleaning some years back (could be 10-15 years) I was searching for something else on the net and clicked over some links that have sent me to a Russian website that wasn’t what I was looking for. However, my attention was quickly captured by some pictures showing some kind of tube sockets cleaning procedure. That person (whoever did it) has “gone overboard” to the extreme with it. He has deepened all the sockets he had (and he must have had a good 70 in there!) in a hydrochloric acid (HCl) solution bath for about 10-20 minutes to clean all rust and grime along with any existing original metal coating and obviously exposing the bear metal in the process. Then, he literally soldered links of wire between all the socket pins and all sockets together and set up an electrolysis rig to silver plate/re-plate all contacts making them look brand new again. As for the donor electrode he used a small 99.8% Silver Barr. Everything was explained in great detail. Now, I don’t really know how viable this is but, I thought that the idea was great .

@ovi4 I would think the only problem would be silver tarnishes so easily, however, it is the best conductor around. Depending on the application, other metals might be used, such as gold (does not tarnish), nickle (might heat up in high current situations) or a nickle/tin alloy. I do not know if plating with alloys is feasible for the hobbist. I live in a oil field, and the airborne gases are terrible to mechanical switchs. Such as wafer switches, I have several recievers and transceivers with switch problems and have been searching for a plating for them. I like gold, but I don’t think that it would wear well with switch movment. Still looking…

Good luck with your sockets.

I use wooden tooth picks. No chemicals needed. Just spin the pick in the hole   

Posted by: @scotty44

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[…] I do not know if plating with alloys is feasible for the hobbyist. 

Hi Scotty44 – I’ve done a fair amount of electroplating (as a hobbyist). It’s pretty easy to do several different metals as long as the proper precautions are followed for the chemicals involved.

 I live in a oil field, and the airborne gases are terrible to mechanical switches.

Oh, I hear you. Our house is a mile from the Atlantic Ocean and my wife’s office is only 4 blocks away. Anything here made of metal gets eaten up real fast. Forget outside electrical socket boxes or breaker panels. Even naval brass pits within weeks. And, though I wasn’t in the Navy, I can’t imagine how navies deal with the salt air – other than lots of man hours scrapin’, then slappin’ paint on – and probably using some nasty chemical treatments as well.

cheers

-HP

@howardp Lots or painting. 🙂

 We also would periodically run the fresh water wash down system to get rid of salt build up 🙂

@okedokey What kind of paint does the Navy use on steel to prevent rusting?  I’ve also wondered how they treat bare steel on a ship.  Like on machine tools that have unpainted surfaces.