Originally Web posted Sunday, 6 February 2005.
Content last modified
Friday, 25 January 2008
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External links last verified Sunday, 6 February 2005.
Caig Laboratories makes all kinds of chemicals. The few i have personally used, all contact cleaners, have all been excellent.
For many years, the best general-purpose product of theirs, if a person were only going to choose one, was Cramolin® R-5, a 5% concentration of the Cramolin® chemical in spray form (leftmost in the picture). Unfortunately, that excellent product used Freon® as its propellant.
In the mid 1980s, Caig Labs introduced a replacement product with a more environmentally-friendly propellant, which they named De•Ox•It®, more recently DeoxIT®. The 1980s DeoxIT was good, yet had side-effects that Cramolin did not have, specifically making slide potentiometers mechanically sticky and rough, at least until the propellant fully evaporated. The can in the middle of the photo above dates from either the late 1980s or early 1990s… the last time i bought a can (the stuff lasts seemingly forever in hobbyist/homeowner use, used properly). Because of this, i do not know if newer formulations have been altered to cure the issues with slide controls.
At some point in the 1990s, Caig reintroduced Cramolin® as a spray, without Freon®. I do not have an illustrative can for this period, as i still had my can of Freon-laden early 1980s Cramolin. I seem to recall that Caig was selling both Cramolin and DeoxIT in this period, further confusing the issue.
Also in the 1990s (i believe), Caig introduced a new contact cleaner, ProGold® (can on the right in the picture). This new, more expensive cleaner was (and is) primarily intended for gold and gold-plated contacts, though Caig claims it may also be used with non-gold contacts, as for DeoxIT/Cramolin, with excellent results.
Because i had been using Cramolin and/or DeoxIT on gold contacts for years with great success, it was only recently that i obtained an actual can of ProGold and started using it. To date, i have not noticed a difference, however i am in no way doing any sort of scientific study: each application of either chemical is usually a new use with no prior track record.
As of the last external links verification date of this page, the following item(s) was/were available from Caig Laboratories which fill the product niche originally occupied by the original Cramolin R-5:
You might want to check the following pages for related products:
Note: I have no affiliation with Caig Laboratories, other than as a satisfied customer. If i did, i would let them know that their website, while better than it used to be, still needs help. If you find any broken links to their site (actually part of shopping.netledger.com at this writing), which is likely, search on one or more of the product names above, and consider letting them know that they are making it difficult for folks like me to hook up folks like you with their good products.
Historically, Caig has been more than happy to provide literature and information regarding the use of their many products and which to choose for particular applications. This page of mine discusses only two of their dozens and dozens of products. Along with the 100% liquid version of Cramolin®, these are the only Caig products i personally use—for everything. You may well want to spend some time on the Caig website and decide for yourself which of their many products best suits your needs.
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