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Re: DIY Vinyl cleaning fluid

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Guys, having worked at Discwasher years back (for 7 years), I got to know a bit about vinyl, and cleaning it.

I helped Dr. Maier, the founder and President of the company (a biochemist), with much of the latter day research into vinyl cleaning and the ills of the competition.

The main thing boils down to one aspect: whatever you use, water, alcohol, surfactants, etc. GET IT ON AND OFF THE VINYL QUICKLY !

Pure water is highly active, and will eat up poly-based plastics like you wouldn' believe! DIscwasher had to replace the drums and containers used to mix and hold the dialysis grade purte water used in the D4 formula quite frequently! Even teflon lined ones only helped some.

Alcohol, even isopropyl, will eventually leach out the stabilizers and other vinyl fillers, so again, keep the contact to a minimum, get it on, and get it off in a timely fashion

As for other additives and ingedients, I do NOT recomend Photoflo, it leaves a residue, and is hard to get off after it has been applied.
Ditto Lysol Direct, it is not as benign as you would believe.

For those really dirty or salvaged records, just a tiny drop of plain DAWN dishwashing detergent, with a mild isopropol (20%) pure water rinse, will usually do the trick. This will also leach stabilizers if left on the record, get it on and off quickly.

I whole hearted recommend the use of a decent vacuum cleaner, as this is the ONLY way to get the fluid off in a hurry! DO NOT LET THEM AIR DRY!

BTW, D4 fluid was buffered and treated so it's hyper pure water would not attack, and on the whole, it had less solids content than even a good grade of soft tap water, it was designed to be attracted to the chemically treated brush fibers, and held until evaporating. Quit sophisticated actually, too bad the whole story was never told, but Bruce didn't want to give away all the trade secrets.

Jon Risch


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