I often work with circuit boards at my job. I don’t do anything special, I mainly just clean them and screw them into their housings. But when we clean them, we completely soak them into alcohol over and over again until they are spotless. How does this not damage the circuit board or the components on the board? Yet if I drop my phone in water, it will ruin it.
In: Chemistry
Water has salts, calcium and magnesium deposits. These conduct electricity and can fry something even after the device is 100% dry (they don’t evaporate). Short-circuits kill the device.
Alcohol doesn’t conduct any electricity, has no salts and impurities (most of the time), and evaporates very fast. Probably brings impurities along with it because it’s a strong solvent.
I should’ve tried washing out wet electronics with alcohol to get the salts out. A pro tip for wet phones is sticking it in a sock and spinning it until you force the water out via centrifugal force.
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