Flash Rust
[Edit: I took some pictures so you can see what's going on.]
It so hot and so humid here that the flash drive I carry with me has started to rust.
Actually, I don't know how long ago it started.
I checked it this morning, and it was worse than the last time I checked. Seems like the metal had some kind of protective finish on it, and by filing off the old rust, I took off the finish and only encouraged new rust to grow.
So this morning, I filed off what rust I could, then put a thin layer of cooking oil on it. Oil is a great insulator, and while flash drives get warm, I sincerely doubt it'll reach the flash point of oil.
It may not be the best solution, but it's worked great since I put the oil on two days ago, when I started writing this post. No visible new rust, and the oil seems to be holding up fairly well.
It so hot and so humid here that the flash drive I carry with me has started to rust.Actually, I don't know how long ago it started.
I checked it this morning, and it was worse than the last time I checked. Seems like the metal had some kind of protective finish on it, and by filing off the old rust, I took off the finish and only encouraged new rust to grow.So this morning, I filed off what rust I could, then put a thin layer of cooking oil on it. Oil is a great insulator, and while flash drives get warm, I sincerely doubt it'll reach the flash point of oil.
It may not be the best solution, but it's worked great since I put the oil on two days ago, when I started writing this post. No visible new rust, and the oil seems to be holding up fairly well.
posted by William at
8/11/2008 07:23:00 PM
4 Comments:
That seems like a strange thing to accumulate rust. Wow.
If the cooking oil starts to get sticky or tacky you might see if you can find sewing machine oil over there, though I'm not sure that it will be easy to find as it may be called something else. Sewing machine oil is also used on electric hair trimmers on the blade. I've mostly seen it packaged in very tiny vials here, though I have a plastic container of it in the medicine cupboard that I use with the trimmers that is more "industrial" size for the stuff, but it is still not much bigger than a large bottle of Visine eye drops or such.
Yeah, it had a light coating of zinc applied, most likely, or a conversion coat of some kind. Filing it was probably not the best of ideas, although it should be fine as long as you keep it oiled. Be ware, oil collects dust, so you're going to have to clean it periodically now.
In terms of it being an odd thing to pick up rust: keep in mind that I wear it all day, every day. In weather like this, it's not just humidity and air temperature, but my sweat and body heat as well. Saltwater is never particularly kind to metals, you know?
On the bright side, I don't use it a lot, so it's not like I have to oil it really often.
Try vasaline it works as well but has a lower punch thu for the contacts. That what I used on old pinball contactors plus it slide in and out better.
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