Last month, my trusty Tungsten T3 started acting up. It would just spontaneously shut down, even while I was in the midst of doing something. This was particularly annoying when, for instance, I was using it as an MP3 player and it would just stop arbitrarily right in the middle of Bono’s wail.

After some fiddling, I realized that the problem lay in its slider mechanism: the T3 only acted up whenever it was in shut mode.

The slider contacts could just be loose, I thought. Which was still a bummer - I didn’t want to open up my unit, and I didn’t want to send it in for a quick repair since I simply didn’t have the time to take it anywhere.

And then I remembered that I had that huge can of contact cleaner just sitting on my tool shelf (see related story here). Perhaps the contacts just needed a little cleaning?

Contact cleaners are sprays that react with moderate levels of corrosion, often working effectively enough to completely eat the corrosion away. These sprays are non-conductive, so there is no danger of shorting out your electronic equipment. You can flood circuit boards with this stuff and it wouldn’t matter. Of course, more serious types of corrosion would need more intensive cleaning methods, so contact cleaners are generally used for maintenance rather than for repair. But if you’re lucky, then contact cleaner alone may be all that you’ll need to fix something.

Fortunately for me, the T3’s slider contacts are exposed to the elements. Thus, there was no need for me to open up the unit to access these (regardless of how screwdriver-happy you are, the less you pry your device open, the better).

So out went my trusty contact cleaner and, with nozzle attached, it was simply a matter of pointing it at the two slider contacts. These are located at the back of the T3 and visible when the slider is set to the open position.

After a couple of generous sprays, I could literally see the metal slider contacts becoming shinier. Presto! Loose connection was gone, and my T3 was good as new! Now I can listen to Bono as he screams his lungs out without having to worry about unwanted interruptions.

If you have gadgets with knobs, sliders and other mechanisms that come with electronic contacts, a can of contact cleaner can be a pretty useful first aid tool. That, and a micro screwdriver set, a fine-point soldering iron, tweezers, voltmeter, potato chips…