PRODUCT REVIEW: ProGold and DeoxIT - CAIG Laboratories, Inc. One of the most difficult areas of electronic equipment maintenance and restoration is cleaning and preserving electrical contact points. As these component surfaces and areas become dirty and eroded due to friction, wear, arcing, etc. Switches and relays are difficult to replce both from a logistic standpoint as well as the actual installation of the new part. Over the past few months I have been engaged in rejuvenating several old pieces of amateur and military pieces of radio equipment. These include a Johnson Viking I transmitter, a Collins R-390 receiver, a Collins KWM-2A transciever and a rare RS-6 "spy" radio set from the Cold War 1950s. All these radios are valuable and getting hard to find. The above five pieces were all in excellent cosmetic condition, unmodified and clean. They all had something in common: switches and relays would be hard to find and difficult to replace. Good electrical contact is paramount in these older receivers and transmitter circuits - degraded or non-performance can often be traced to dirty, corroded intermittant electrical contact. CAIG Laboratories in San Diego CA produces a line of chemical products to clean and condition electrical contacts. I used CAIG's ProGold and DeoxIT for these valuable pieces of old radio equipment for my personal collection and made the following observations. Both ProGold and DeoxIT come in different configurations - spray and needle applicators at both 5% and 100% concentrations. The 5% dilutions are carried by petroleum naptha solvent which is flammable until the solvent evaporates. For applications where a non-flammable carrier is used, another fast-evaporating solvent is available. Some of the confgurations offer metered short bursts - after all the stuff's too good to waste! I personally prefer to use anhydrous isopropyl to clean contacts so I used the 100% concentration in the 25 mL needle applicator to condition and deoxidize. For quicker jobs the spray would also be useful in tight places. I used both DeoxIT and ProGold in my rejuvenations - depending on what kind of contact I wanted to restore. I used ProGold for plated surfaces because it deoxidizes and cleans surface crud, but more important, it penetrates plated surfaces and its molecules actually bond to those of the base metals. I also use it to enhance connctions between similar and dissimilar metals such as gold, copper, silver and other metals. Many of these older pieces of equipment have carbon potentiometers. Solvents are not advisable to clean carbon pots - most of the time these controls and their contacting surfaces only need lubrication to extend their life. I used 100% concentrate ProGold, turning the pot several times to distribute the chemical. I was impressed with the results - noisy, scratchy pots greatly improved. I plan on applying ProGold once a year to try to maintain their performance as-is. I used DeoxIT for general purpose contact treatment. A little goes a long way. My findings are that these products are useful for restoring older radio equipment without concern that they contain anything that will do damage. I certainly plan on keeping both ProGold and Deoxit in the front row of radio service and maintenance supplies. %T ProGold and DeoxIT %I CAIG Laboratories, Inc. %C 16744 West Bernardo Dr., San Diego CA 92127 %D 619-451-1799 fax: 619-451-2799 DeoxIT and ProGold both available from the manufacturer and selected retailers (C) 1996 Michael Crestohl Nahant Massachusetts USA mc@shore.net DISCLAIMER: I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the success or failure of the book or materials reviewed herewith, nor have I received any compensation (other than a review copy requested by me) from anyone who has. All opinions expressed are strictly my own. Other Internet and Aviation book/software reviews by me can be obtained by anonymous FTP from: x2ftp.oulu.fi in the /pub/books/crestohl directory.