Discussion on:

Extend equipment life by following these clean habits

I had a cd-rom drive that went thru motions of burning but didn't write anything; 99 cents store had cd drive cleaner, tiny brush and fluid; then the drive worked!

We had a really old server with raid array; failed to boot; I cleaned it out and then worked fine from then on.

My home PC died after 5 years; had layer of dust on CPU heatsink;

Perhaps my most interesting tale is of an industrial controller frame (HP pc with large # of interface boards), covered with dust. I carefully disassembled boards, writing down locations; cleaned the boards and frame then the thing worked.

Remember, cleanliness is ....
happy hardware?

My people love to put there PC's on the floor.
Out of site out of mind.
How can you talk people out of this.

One of the benefits of a thorough and systematic cleaning routine is that in the process it forces you to actually look at and focus on each internal part of the equipment. I used to service commercial 2-way radios and if you think a PC on an office floor gets dirty, try a 2-way mobile unit that's spent a couple of years in the cab of a concrete mixer truck. My SOP, regardless of the reported malfunction, was to start with a thorough cleaning inside and out, including a shot of cleaner spray and "work it back and forth" for all the user-accessible controls, and blowing/brushing the dust from the insides including the circuit board. It was a rare broken wire or cracked solder joint that escaped detection during that process. I'd estimate that half of the "dead" units I serviced needed nothing more that a quick alignment, if that, once the cleaning was done. For a computer service operation, this cleaning, initial inspection, and correction of obvious problems like loose cables can be assigned to lesser-skilled personnel trained in proper ESD techniques and basic PC component handling, freeing the more highly skilled technicians for deeper diagnosis and repair.

When blowing the Canned air through the system put a stick in the fan to stop the air from spinning it. The Voltage generated could kill it.

A motor spins a fan but a fan turns a generator!

Now that you pointed that out, it seems so obvious!!! I wonder, was your warning based on experience or theory! I would hope that the Power Supply &/or Motherboard vendors would have included back voltage protection when they started the option for DC driven fans, but who knows? So, that is my question: is this a real or percieved threat? Anybody out there familiar with the designs characteristics of th supply line?

I haven't been anywhere where you could point out a power supply failure due to this, but there is a second reason to keep the fan from turning. Fan bearings are designed for a relatively low RPM and can be damaged by a high speed spinup from an air blast. Then you have to replace the fan.

We used (past tense) a number of IBM 3XX machines in a high particulate area. While cleaning them the SOP was a power supply and heat sink fan blowdown cleaning. The fan spinning caused a voltage spike of more than 5 volts and popped the first 5 volt Cap on the PCMCIA board. The unit when put back into operation caught fire from the oil on the board. The Director was NOT happy and ordered a revamp of all units. PCMCIAs were disabled by disconnecting power supply and IDE cable. The SOP was rewritten to include fan blade capture prior to cleaning.

Thanks Better late than never.
Until now (thanks to your advise), I used to blow the fan till it was about to spin off to get the dust off of it.
I guess I'm luckier than I thought. I haven't done any damage yet.
I be sure not to do that anymore. Again, thanks for the advise

I agree that cleaning a fan disconnected from the motherboard is a good practice, but I hate to burst your bubble. I just ran a test on several fans taken from systems. I used a dead CMOS battery - CR2032 - lithium as my benchmark. This battery registered 4 volts and .078 milliamperes. The fans were the standard (Chinese and Japanese) power supply, CPU and case fans. All of them when spun up with air or a vacuum didn't even register any amperage or voltage on either the DC or AC settings. I was using a Micronanta Digital Multimeter model 22-185.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but to induce a current, the magnets must pass through the coil, not past it. Most of these fans have the coils around the hub with the magnets mounted in the middle. Maybe being brushless also affects the functionality as a generator.

Yes. It may seem trivial, however, most of the machines I run across have all heat sinks and fans plugged solid, both on the Motherboard, and in the power supply. I know "techs" who refuse to clean anything, stating that dust does not hurt anything. Here in Canada, in the OTTAWA (National Capital Region) I have found 3 out of 5 computers with paper or plastic gummy labels on the CPU, holding the heatsink away from the chip! I though this "Bean Counter" practise would end with the 586, but am now finding labels on Slot 1 and Slot "A" newer CPU's!! ( See my tiny website, kidbots.com to see why I have 2 1/2 tons of older equipment). I always remove the heatsink to check for coded "WARRANTY VOID IF REMOVED" labels from the CPU'S when cleaning... The response that mentions NOT spinning the fans with air is, again, often unknown or ignored! Also, since I was going thru huge amounts of canned air, I now specifically purchase a small shop vaccuum, and use the EXHAUST port to obtain unlimited air - far superior to any can, and easy to find, purchase, and set up if you find yourself in a distant city somewhere...