That guy who told me to use compressed air backwards on a motherboard was right

A customer brought in a laptop that had a dead short last month. A guy I know from the local shop said try blowing compressed air backwards through the power jack to clear dust. I thought he was nuts but I tried it anyway. Sure enough a tiny piece of debris came out and the board powered up fine. Has anyone else used reverse air for weird fixes or was this just a lucky break?

3 comments

3 Comments

blair9901d ago

3M actually has a tech bulletin about using reverse airflow for clearing debris from sensitive ports. It works because dust and contaminants tend to get wedged in the same direction as normal airflow during use. Sounds like you got lucky but the logic checks out if the short was just a bit of metal flake or something similar.

xenam8422h ago

I mean, is cleaning a port really that deep though? Feels like people overthink this stuff when a quick blast of canned air usually does the trick.

oliver_baker4921h ago

3M putting out a tech bulletin about it definitely makes it sound more complicated than it is. I'd bet 90% of people just blast it with air and call it a day with zero issues.