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Q&As since 1989


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Cleaning - Pure Nickel

For my study work, I have to clean the Pure (99.8%) Nickel. I want to remove the Moisture, other contaminations and foregin materials. Pl give a solution to do the same with out lose in purity.

S.P.Madavan
Product designer - Bangalore, India
2007

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Maybe I'm not fully understanding the problem, Madavan, but it seems that you can either bead blast it or chemically clean it. If you chemically clean it, what you need to do would depend on the nature of the soils and contaminants, but probably scrub with pumice [on eBay or Amazon] and water, then rinse with isopropyl alcohol [on eBay or Amazon]. If that's still too much water, dry it in a vapor degreaser. Good luck.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007

Do not dry parts in a halogen based vapor degreaser unless you want a severely pitted unit that will cost a fortune in stabilizer breakdown and eventual replacement of the unit.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida
2007

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I'll concede that drying parts in a vapor degreaser creates HCl, which is bad for the degreaser, James. But it has long been a common procedure for electronic contacts and other parts of complex shape where contaminant-free drying is otherwise problematic; and some shops have dedicated units that are used exclusively for drying.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007