1y ago

What happened to denatured alcohol?

I'm in US-GA and I cannot find denatured alcohol locally. WTF happened? I need something 100% alcohol for cleaning electronics.

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38 comments

Isopropyl works fine for this sort of application.
- Maybe if it is 100%. I have tried 91% and it doesn't work as well. It needs to be able to clean rosin flux.
  
  My local electronics store has 99.5% isopropyl alcohol, it works great.
  
  We don't really have electronics stores here anymore. The highest I've seen locally is 91%, and while it does kind of clean it off, denatured alcohol has always worked a lot better for me so it's disappointing to see that it's gone. I'll probably just order some online. But still, I'd be interested in knowing why.
  
  I got my 99.9% isopropyl off amazon from MGchemicals, big bottle but its nice to have
  
  Very few people bother with hobbyist electronics anymore. It's not surprising that 100% alcohol is dead in retail stores. Most demand for it today is related to disinfectants.
  
  I used to use 91 to clean flux and it works fine, might have to do a few passes though
  If you clean flux regularly I highly suggest getting a cheap ultrasonic bath and some branson EC solution. It comes concentrated so a bottle lasts forever and solution can be reused a few times. If you only do a few projects a year it’s way overkill but I do a lot of rework stuff and it’s soooo much easier to just drop stuff in the bath for 20m when I’m done. A used decent sized one was like $80 and the solution was like $40 for a quart which has lasted me 2 years so far because I only change the bath once a month and it’s like 2% per gallon. Also super handy for cleaning corroded pcbs, stuff like that if you do repair work
  
  I don't... sounds like something I should have had many years ago though.
  
  You have to ask for it from the pharmacist. It's generally kept behind the desk.

38 comments