Nazo
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2002
- Messages
- 3,672
So, I got a large tube of dielectric grease some time ago for various things in the car as it's pretty common to use it for things such as battery terminals, contacts on things such as lights, and etc to help protect the metal from corrosion while still allowing a physical connection (it has a high viscosity so physical contacts push the grease out of the way and aren't insulated from each other.) The grease is also used for things like waterproofing outdoor antenna connections and other such things.
So I'm having a bit of a thought. What would happen if I used it on something like a cellphone? I've heard of people using it to do things such as completely waterproofing an iPod Shuffle for instance, which is nice I suppose, but it's a very minimal system. A cellphone is much higher end and produces a lot more heat. A dielectric should also insulate thermally as well shouldn't it? For normal uses this doesn't matter, but a cellphone already can produce a lot of heat when playing games or that sort of thing...
Along these lines I've also kind of wondered about another, different direction: thermal paste. Some, such as Arctic Silver 5, can be really bad due to being capacitive or even slightly conductive, but many such as Arctic Cooling MX-4 and ceramic-based compounds are supposed to be completely non-capacitive and non-conductive. I have quite a bit of AC MX-4 on hand still, so this is a possibility. I don't have much I can really test this on though as I don't particularly want to destroy my electronics just to test -- I just know that they push this as one of the many selling points of the material.
Note that the idea I have is not complete waterproofing. I'm just thinking of brushing it onto contacts and SMD components with a q-tip. The goal is not to be able to dunk in water, but just to ensure that if rain or something gets in it won't short anything.
Any thoughts? Too crazy to work, or maybe it might just protect things against reasonable amounts of water?
So I'm having a bit of a thought. What would happen if I used it on something like a cellphone? I've heard of people using it to do things such as completely waterproofing an iPod Shuffle for instance, which is nice I suppose, but it's a very minimal system. A cellphone is much higher end and produces a lot more heat. A dielectric should also insulate thermally as well shouldn't it? For normal uses this doesn't matter, but a cellphone already can produce a lot of heat when playing games or that sort of thing...
Along these lines I've also kind of wondered about another, different direction: thermal paste. Some, such as Arctic Silver 5, can be really bad due to being capacitive or even slightly conductive, but many such as Arctic Cooling MX-4 and ceramic-based compounds are supposed to be completely non-capacitive and non-conductive. I have quite a bit of AC MX-4 on hand still, so this is a possibility. I don't have much I can really test this on though as I don't particularly want to destroy my electronics just to test -- I just know that they push this as one of the many selling points of the material.
Note that the idea I have is not complete waterproofing. I'm just thinking of brushing it onto contacts and SMD components with a q-tip. The goal is not to be able to dunk in water, but just to ensure that if rain or something gets in it won't short anything.
Any thoughts? Too crazy to work, or maybe it might just protect things against reasonable amounts of water?