Chemicals

In various electronics repairs, you will eventually need some contact spray (both dry and lubricating) and flux for soldering. Those will get you very far. If you do any mechanical work, you'll want some some run-of-the-mill lubricants (ordinary oil and lithium grease will get you very, very far). A bottle of isopropanol can be invaluable to remove greasy or sticky stains or flux remnants, and some acetone for the really tough ones (but be careful you don't completely dissolve whatever you're working on).

I've been doing electronics (and various other mechanical projects) for a while, and will happily attack any other technical problem as well, be it a broken refrigerator door hinge, a seized-up sewing machine, or a stubborn bicycle shifter. Therefore I have accumulated a variety of service chemicals, with quite likely an unnecessary amount of overlap. But hey, most of them will last forever. (And, being a chemist by training, I can hardly help myself, can I?) The following is a (likely incomplete) list of what awful, smelly poisons I have in shelf. Yes, they all have their uses:

• Solvents:
  • Isopropanol: generic bottle (all-around solvent that's safe for most plastics)
    • Pro tip: Mix 1 part IPA and 3–4 parts water for a wonderful all-around cleaning fluid!
    • Many eyeglass cleaning fluids are that same composition. Make your own at a fraction of the cost!
  • Isopropanol spray: PRF IPA
  • Isopropanol, gelled: Erä Trekking fire-starter gel
    • This stuff is great as a cutting fluid when drilling aluminum
    • Being a gel, it will stay where you dispense it, rather than running off
  • Acetone: generic bottle (not so safe for all plastics)
    • For tough grease or sticky stains that IPA will not remove
    • Acetone will also dissolve hardened cyanoacrylate super glue
  • Grease remover spray: AT Citrus Active
    • For removing big gobs of old grease from ancient Soviet microscopes or from poorly (or never) maintained fishing reels
  • Brake cleaner spray: CRC Brakleen Pro
    • Mainly for cleaning the brake discs and pads on my bicycle
    • Also good for some other hardcore cleaning, as long as the work piece does not dissolve in it...
    • Modern brake cleaners (including this one) no longer contain trichloroethylene, which was awesome stuff, but regrettably carcinogenic
  • Whisky: Bruichladdich Octomore 11.2, will have to make do
  
  
• Electronics sprays:
  • Dry contact spray: PRF 6-68
  • Lubricating contact spray: PRF 7-78
    • Pro tip: For cleaning 3.5 mm phone jacks with contact spray, an inter-dental brush (e.g. Jordan Clinic, size L) is just the thing!
  • Plastic spray: PRF 202
    • Pro tip: Don't use this as a substitute for contact spray when servicing scratchy potentiometers.
  • Cold spray: PRF 101
  • Air duster: PRF 4-44
    • Pro tip: When servicing that 40-year old desktop PC or server, take it outside before applying the air duster!
  
  
• Lubricants:
  • Spray vaseline: PRF Bajol (Awesome stuff! It penetrates like oil, and then thickens into grease.)
  • Lithium grease: CRC Super Adhesive Grease KP 2 N-30 (Just your generic average lithium grease.)
  • Synthetic grease: Synco SuperLube (Several astro discussion boards seemed to prefer this specific brand over anything else, e.g. generic lithium grease, for lubricating telescope focusers etc. when they must work at ultimate below-freezing temperatures! I found exactly one retailer in Finland.)
  • Fishing reel grease: Mitchell X3 (Green and smelly, yuck!)
  • Silicone grease: CRC Silikon-Fett
  • PTFE lubricant spray: CRC Dry Lube. Doesn't actually seem to do much at all, really...
  • Bicycle chain oil: AT Sport. I use this also as a cutting fluid when tapping threads in aluminum, or on the rare occasion I drill steel. I also oil my bicycle chain with it.
  • Sewing machine oil: Prym
  • Rust remover spray: Maston R3
  • Multi-spray: CRC 5-56 (pretty much equivalent of WD-40). Not really good for anything, but if all else fails, make a mess.
  
  
• Glues:
  • Epoxy glue: Zap (Pacer) 5 minute Z-Poxy (this is the best!)
  • Laminating epoxy: SP 115 or Ampro 115, for making fiberglass or carbon fiber composites
  • Cyanoacrylate superglue: Zap (Pacer) Thin CA (in the pink bottle); Biltema 36-4831 thicker Superglue with kicker spray
    • Pro tip: Store the CA in a refrigerator. It will extend its lifetime greatly! (Yes, I do have a dedicated refirgerator in my workshop.)
    • I used to store my epoxies in a refrigerator as well. However, that may have been a bad choice. I've recently had a fairly fresh epoxy turn opaque and viscous, and there are resources on the net saying epoxies may begin to "crystallize" if stored much below room temperature. In my own use, they've still worked just fine, but been slower coming out of the bottle, which is a nuisance.
  • Contact cement: Casco Kontaktlim
  • Thread lock: Mavala 3 Paris (yes, that's nail polish)
  •  Shoe glue: Casco LiquiSole  This stuff was awesome! It would actually glue a cracked rubber sole or gumboot, and it would stand up to walking! It found no end of use for all kinds of other waterproofing applications as well. It would stick to just about anything! But it had a very limited shelf life once opened, and you can't get it anymore. (Did it contain something too toxic? Heck, I'm still living and breathing...)
  • Shoe glue: Casco RubberFix. Their replacement for the discontinued LiquiSole, with a uniquely wimpy name... Seems quite similar, but let's see how well it holds up.
  • Thermal glues: See below, under Thermal compounds.
  • I've dabbled with Loctite Kintsuglue and epoxy Repair Putty. Some niche applications do benefit from them, but I have no need the keep them actually in shelf.
  
  
• Soldering:
  • Flux paste: Biltema 19-719 Lödpasta (No, really! This is my go-to flux—awesome stuff!)
  • Liquid flux: Multicore 6381-35
  • Solder tinning compound: Bera-Fix (This is a thick paste of leaded solder and flux. Because of RoHS, you cannot get this anymore.)
  • Solder:
    • I have over 3 kg of leaded solder of various thicknesses stashed away. I really don't want to learn soldering again with lead-free. :)
    • I have a small amount of AluSol solder, which sorta kinda solders aluminum (not all too reliably, though), but messes up the iron's tip, and the fumes stink to high hell!
  • For fabricating PCBs (on the rare occasion I need to): NaOH developer (yes, ordinary drain opener will also work just fine when suitably diluted), and sodium persulfate for etching (I've also used diluted nitric acid, or hydrochloric acid / hydrogen peroxide mixture, depending on what's available). I tend to make a mess, so keep ferrichloride far, far away from me!
  
  
• Thermal compounds:
  • Silicone thermal paste: Unick thermal compound
  • Silver thermal paste: Arctic Silver 5
  •  Thermal glue: AG ThermoGlue  This stuff will set in the tube after just one use. More than strong enough, though, when it's still fresh.
  • Thermal glue: Phobya 2-Component Thermal Glue. About 30 minutes reasonable working time, sets in a few hours to a gummy consistency, and can be handled without care the next day. (It says "total curing" will take 5–7 days—perhaps if your mixing ratio is off by too much?) After 2 days, I just barely managed to break apart two 2 cm square anodized aluminum tubes I glued together perpendicular to each other (4 cm² contact area, same ballpark as the processor on a Raspberry Pi). Way strong enough to hold the heaviest heat sink (you'll tear the IC off the PCB first), and being a 2-component epoxy, it will hopefully keep longer than the above single component glue. (After longer storage, it might be good to mix a tiny test sample before actual use, just to verify that it still sets properly.)
  
  
• Other:
  • Citric acid: A solution of this is just the stuff to clean up after leaked alkaline batteries (which thankfully is no longer a common occurrence with today's brand-name alkalines). Lemon juice would also do, but it will contain sugars and other useless organics to remove afterwards, and vinegar just stinks.
  • Shoe odor spray: Fresh K.O. extreme sports spray. (This will remove the nerd smell from winter shoes, and is idiot proof, but just a bit too minty if used carelessly.)
  • Whisky: See above, under Solvents.