Re: HP 41C programable calculator Message #12 Posted by sbirdasn on 24 May 2005, 8:21 p.m., in response to message #11 by Klaus
The distilled water is just fine (suggest waiting for the unit to fully dry before applying power again).
However, if you are suggesting using Contact Lens soaking/disinfecting solution (a.k.a. saline solution), then NO! DON'T DO IT!
All "for in the eye use" solutions contain a specific concentration level of salt (Na-Cl) that will not be good to leave behind. Tap water would be safer than a deliberately salty solution. You will leave a small amount of corrosive alkaline salts behind in places that are hard to reach and are not guaranteed to be able to completely remove once deposited there.
Most people have the mistaken assumption that it is the water that kills electronic things that get wet, when it is the contaminates that are the problem.
And the big problem with active circuitry is due to salts that when in solution split into ions to permit charge flow between different potentials of circuit nodes that act as anode/cathode plates in the solution the device finds itself bathed in (read spilled on).
Hope this helps for the less chemistry minded among us.
sbirdasn.
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