After ruining many watches, cameras, and cd players over the years, I begin to wonder what is it that makes water so powerful against electronics? You would think that after drying the components they would work, but from my experience that isn't the case most of the time.
I don't know a lot about circuitry or electronics, but I am very interested. Any answers to this will be appreciated, especially references or links. Thanks,
Taylor K.
what do you know about water?
Any answers to this will be appreciated, especially
water is an insulator, however salts and other materials suspended in it conduct. clean the gunk from the electronics (if you can) and it will work provided he components remain intact.
The ions, salt and impurities in even tap water work like an electrolyte causing metal to migrate, short out and create that wonderful copper oxide gooze.
If you want to win the game. or beat the odds, keep a couple gallons of deionized water around, remove ALL batteries from the device immediately and soak thouroughly in the deionized water, then rinse with a clean batch of same before drying out. Pure alcohol might help dry it out unless it is diluted with unknown water and oils (rubbing alcohol). You have to worry about alcohol attacking some plastic materials though.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, I've done this a few times with success.
If something gets wet, like mobile phone dropped in the loo, personal organiser dropped in bear glass, etc, immediately remove all power sources to prevent any damage through electrolosis. (This isn't always easy as many devices such as mobiles have embedded batteries to keep state when the main battery dies.)
When you get home, disassemble and wash with clean water, or distilled water if available. Then leave disassembled to dry for as long as possible. A week in a warm cupboard is usually enough.
If you're lucky, the device will probably now work again.
| After ruining many watches, cameras, and cd players over the years, I | begin to wonder what is it that makes water so powerful against | electronics? You would think that after drying the components they | would work, but from my experience that isn't the case most of the | time. | | I don't know a lot about circuitry or electronics, but I am very | interested. Any answers to this will be appreciated, especially | references or links. Thanks,
I successfully recovered data from a computer hard drive a friend of mine owned that sat underwater for 4 days in a flood resulting from Hurricane Ivan's trek northward a couple years ago. I instructed her as she was removing it from the building that had water a foot high in the 2nd floor to leave it totally covered in water and do not attempt to dry it whatsoever. When I got the computer I proceeded to slowly wash all the debris with fresh clean water. The I removed the hard drive from the case and re-immersed it in clean water and washed some more, then finally the last few rinses with distilled water. Then I cracked open the drive case and used freon for force dry it further (it was humid enough inside to have condensation). Eventually I power it up. There were a few scary errors and such, but in the end, I got all the data out of it.
Cameras have been completely repaired by similar methods, though with less initial problem. It's more often the drying out process that destroys things, which both leaves debris encrusted, and does some ionic reactions as it does so.
But electrical things in operation can have problems with water being conductives due to the salts and other stuff dissolved in it. It can become a significant conductor that way. And once dry, the remaining precipitate can re-aborb water easily and create recurring problems.
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