Unrevealed Source wrote:
Not arguing with you, but I've never had this problem, Chuck. Used it
dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Denatured alcohol has proven (for me,
anyway) absolutely harmless to everything I've sprayed it on.

I made a bunch of front panel overlays for one customer. They were plexiglas,
and they were engraved with my little CNC mill. I painted them black with
a satin finish Krylon paint, and put the white lettering in with latex paint.
The latex hardened a little too fast, so I wiped the lettering off with alcohol.
That destroyed the baked on Krylon paint. So, thinking that I could salvage the
whole mess, I put the panels in to soak in alcohol, and used a brush to
remove the paint. It worked great, until big cracks started to appear in the
plexiglas front panels. The cracks started to grow from the holes where the
controls passed through. It was a total loss, I had to remake all of the
panels.

Ever since, I have been very careful with alcohol on paint and plexiglas.

The other place alcohol has caused me problems, is it wipes the lettering
off of HP test equipment, and it wipes the black chassis paint off of old
DEC computers (eg. PDP8's, etc.)

And alcohol will remove the color bands from some of the older epoxy dipped
resistors. They used to be marked after they were measured, and the paint
they used was not very good. I found this out because...

I use alcohol to remove rosin flux from PCB's that I manufacture without
a single problem. New parts are immune to its effects.... but also to water's
effects... so I very often use a water clean flux, and a 4 quart ultrasonic
cleaner.

Ultrasonic cleaners, will kill older hybrids, such as used by HP in some
of their mid 1980's test equipment... Everything has its problems, sometimes.

-Chuck

Note, I import 4 quart heated Ultrasonic Cleaners if anyone is interested.
All microprocessor controlled, and very effective for cleaning larger assemblies.
$500 in QTY 1.