Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 12 replies
  • Subscribers 571 subscribers
  • Views 883 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

When electronics find their way into the washing machine...

cstanton

I do my best to avoid cleaning my electronics hardware and peripherals.

 

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, somehow wearable electronics manage to find themselves in the washing machine. I wasn't even washing my trousers where I usually keep it, no, this time my Wii Fit U Meter found itself among the towels, and spun around in the machine. It wasn't until it was too late, and I saw its depressed features pushed up against the glass, that I realised it had gone through an exciting event and probably inflated my walking score.

 

I didn't try to power it on. Not able to find my Y screwdriver, the only thing I could do was put it in rice.

The rice got damp very quickly after a day on the window sill in 35 degrees C heat, I replaced it a couple of times, found my Y screwdriver and finally took it apart.

I have some cleaning to do, now, what's the best way to clean this?

 

image

image

image

I also couldn't help but notice a number of test pads, and some that may even be programming pads.

Parents

  • Not sure there is a rule book for this. Maybe a gentle toothbrush or Q-tips and alcohol?

    I have seen worse - in some electronics that went down with a boat that sank. Really knarly oxide growths that were eventually cleaned by scrubbing with water and alcohol before a proper drying. The oxides were due to the electronics being full of water and baking in the sun for a few weeks after being pulled from the sunken boat. Every thing survived as far as I remember, but I don't think anyone would mistake the resulting circuit boards for brand new parts.

  • in reply to dougw

    Wow , that's amazing to hear, I haven't experienced anything so close, only in my last job we found the servers were reporting hard drive errors, and weird temperature readings - we entered the server room to find it was flooding from the toilets above! Amazingly we discovered that all but one server that ended up contained with water, residue and all sorts of sediment managed to survive. Electronics are surprisingly resilient to this type of abuse it appears!

     

    Thanks for the cleaning advice image

Reply
  • in reply to dougw

    Wow , that's amazing to hear, I haven't experienced anything so close, only in my last job we found the servers were reporting hard drive errors, and weird temperature readings - we entered the server room to find it was flooding from the toilets above! Amazingly we discovered that all but one server that ended up contained with water, residue and all sorts of sediment managed to survive. Electronics are surprisingly resilient to this type of abuse it appears!

     

    Thanks for the cleaning advice image

Children
No Data