Anyone have any Ideas on How

[Robev]

To Remove the Glue or Resin that some idiots used to hold Heatsinks on older Mainly 486 CPU's

I have Heaps of these with the Heatsinks still on and those that I have Removed with a very thin wide wedge leave a dirty great hard glob of some sort of Glue or Resin on top of the chip. It is a sort of dirty Yellow colour that is partially transparent.

Cheers in advance for any advice.

[JAC]

Please dont boil!


If its the hard resin type thermal compound, then you are on your own. I have only seen this type on early pentiums, it lifts the printing off as well.

If its anything softer, then I have had some success with industrial solvents. MEK is the best. Experiment.

[xi11west]

Anyone had a test on boiled processors? Most processors can stand 70C-80C, which is a conservative range. I guess 100C is not a big deal, especially it's not running and have more even temperature distribution within in the chip.

[debs3759]

I use a cellulose thinners for that sort of compound. It's the only thing I found that does the job with some compounds (and even then it doesn't always work very well), and it takes some time to soften it enough to take of with a cocktail stick (or anything else hard enough to scrape but not hard enough to damage the processor). The compound comes off the heatspreader reasonably easily but needs a damn good scrape to get off the ceramic, and some of the compounds like that leave stains on ceramic.

If you use a cellulose thinners, do it outside or in a well ventilated room - first time I did it I thought I was developing a migraine - it was the thinners, which stayed in the air for days!

[Hippo]

There are three things I use for cleaning CPU's

1. IPA Solvent (Isopropol Alcohol I think). Works great for removing most gunk.

2. A small PCB brush for removing dust

3. A Homemade scraping tool, made from a flexible piece of perspex wedged into a machine file handle. This is great for removing stickers and heavier gunk without ruining your nails/cpu

[Robev]

Thank you all for the good advice, it is appeciated. Cheers

[JAC]

[FDIV]

I often use goo gone. I have never had it take off any text. Belive it or not soaking in water ofen works as well. Many of the glues are water soluble. I think some people used to glue heat sinks on with elmers. I have also used razor blades on ceramic cpu's when in an absolute fix. I would not suggest it though you have to be extremely carefull not to remove text and you have no chance of keeping the cpu mint. I only do this when the cpu is missing pins or damaged in some way already.

[JAC]

I really cant stress just how successful the vice clamp method is in removing a heatsink. I had a real stubbon one last night and it worked a charm. Just a small residue left, easily removed with a solvent.