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Removing epoxy from circuit boards


petejt

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We all know about particular amps that had their circuit boards selfishly coated in epoxy resin so their "trade secret toanz" would be harder to reverse-engineer and replicate.

 

Well, I remembered that when pulling apart the front-loading washing machine to convert into a home-made wind-powered turbine.

 

The circuit board is covered in clear epoxy resin, I guess to help keep it waterproof. There's only so much I can take of picking off millimetre by millimetre with my fingers, so I am asking for advice of more efficient methods.

 

Thanks.

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Heating softens the epoxy but isn't usually a viable solution with circuit boards. Methylene Chloride will also soften the epoxy - unfortunately, it will also destroy most electronic components.

 

So... dental drill / mini dremel, surgeon's knife and lot of patience...?

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Heating softens the epoxy but isn't usually a viable solution with circuit boards. Methylene Chloride will also soften the epoxy - unfortunately, it will also destroy most electronic components.


So... dental drill / mini dremel, surgeon's knife and lot of patience...?

 

I guess I'll have to settle to a butter knife and patience then...

 

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions & insight. :thu:

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a very well known amp modder/builder had a tremendous snafu over that {censored}. it lead to one very pissed off customer and the modder/builder stopping with the epoxy.

 

 

Can you leave out the 'very well known amp modder/builder' 's info and just tell us about the 'tremendous snafu'?

 

:wave:

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yeah...

 

a guy bought an amp, sent it to the modder. modder did his thing, covered the board in epoxy, send it back. then something under the epoxy failed. modder refused to replace the entire board for free, even though it would have been serviceable were it not for the epoxy. owner bought a replacement board from ceriatone or mojo and had to pay a tech to install it.

 

including the original amp purchase, the dude was about $3K into a stock JCM800. :facepalm:

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There was one that came to me, and I posted the pics here.

It's old news, and the modder doesn't epoxy anymore.

The amp in question was a JCM800, and the whole PCB

had to be replaced because of one bad part.

The customer had paid this guy 1200.00 for the mods,

and spent another 350.00 here making it run again.

Thats the story.

 

 

and this is the one i was referring to.

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