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Best water for RCM

Since we have chemists and lab guys here, I'd like to ask if there's any real difference between using distilled water and reverse osmosis water for record cleaning and rinsing? I am well aware of the difference in process but how different is the end product for our purpose?
 
Hi
I am not a chemist however I am a window cleaner who uses revere osmosis pure water to clean glass
My water is purified to 0 parts per million and leaves glass spotless when dry
If I used distilled water I would be leaving the glass with spots on when it dries
I use a vpi 16.5 with lart du son fluid which I store in the fridge and I have had no problems so far over the last 20 years :)
Of course at any one time I have 1000 litres of pure water at my disposal so for me it’s a cheap fix :D
All the best
Tony
 
hockman said:
Since we have chemists and lab guys here, I'd like to ask if there's any real difference between using distilled water and reverse osmosis water for record cleaning and rinsing? I am well aware of the difference in process but how different is the end product for our purpose?
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In a lab setting RO water is the basic level of purity (Type 3) and for serious work it needs to be further filtered and deionised. There are different grades and standards as you might imagine. Distilled water is not perfect either but the remaining impurities are different to RO - it will still have chlorine present and any other volatile species will still be there. One advantage of boiling is to kill any bio material that might have been present. For cleaning records either will do the job I'm sure.
 
Mynamemynaim said:
But cleaning records does NOT require the last word in pure water...even plain tap water is usable ...but not ideal..
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Thank you for vindicating my 'logical' comment (i.e. based upon common sense and experience rather than science) in post 16 just above yours. In soft water supply areas, I can't see how tap water could impact upon the cleaning and preservation of LPs.

In contrast to the obsessive-compulsive water debate, I do advocate 99.999 or whatever IPA for those who use this mix. I've tried lower purity IPA (by accident, I may add) and it is a pointless economy.

For those who use the IPA mix, I can't see any point, except maybe in very dirty record circumstances, for rinsing; waste of energy, i.m.o.. If that bad, I'd simply repeat the cleaning process rather than rinse.

On another essential ingredient of a mix, the surfactant, I, like others, simply use quality non-perfumed w/up liquid. This simply because I had trouble sourcing sufficiently small quantities of potentially more suitable photographic surfactant in the beginning and because the Fairy liquid (or whatever) works well.

Just a thought on this subject; whatever method of RCM one uses, a vacuum device is mandatory, which is why I cannot understand the overall efficacy in the 'new' electronic pulsation things (name escapes me) if they don't have a method of instantly extracting the contaminated water and thereafter, drying by evaporation (essential). Most, it seems, don't. One or two, I think, have warm air fans to dry the record in situ. Maybe it's me but this seems totally counter-intuitive and counter productive.
 
I can only say that the sonic results from a Audio Systeme or Humminguru far exceeds those from any of the vacuum systems that I’ve heard.
 
Distilled water, (from Amazon) 5% isopropyl alcohol, 1% surfactant i.e Triton X or others.
(check out all of "The Audiophile Man" videos on YOU TUBE, very informative on all aspects of record cleaning)
 
Darth Vader said:
I wasn't going to comment but this is completely wrong. I won't go into details but even the purest water you can make and yes I did make and use this in a Chemistry research lab contains ions.

However proper de-ionisation removes cations and anions to leave behind just protons and hydroxyl ions i.e water.

You can use normal tap water for cleaning but then after draining rinse 3 times with distilled water This is how we used to wash equipment in the lab before using the glassware for chemical analysis. The 3 times is interesting and we had to learn the maths behind this. An interesting aside is that for very sensitive chemical analysis we couldn't even use glassware as water being an excellent solvent dissolves some of it. Makes havoc when trying to detect minute quantities of Silicon when most of it came from your glassware!

Science is interesting no?

DV
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I stand corrected, very interesting indeed. Still, looking at the mess my hard tap water makes on my car, ill stick to the cheap and readily available deionised water from Halfords et al.

I understand there will still be ions in there, but none that I can measure with a water hardness meter, and none that leave any visible residue. Definitely wouldn't want to use my tap water on my records but each to their own I guess, it's very hard here.

Thanks for the correction though, genuinely interesting stuff.
 
Re the OP: I use 1 part IPA to 3 parts deionised water with dashes of washing up liquid and tergitol. Works great.
 
I use Winyl Pro Clean-6 concentrate mixed with double distilled water on my Loricraft PRC3. Its the best cleaning fluid I’ve used so far.
 
Do folks think or believe that different recipes of cleaning liquids produce varying results?

david ellwood said:
I can only say that the sonic results from a Audio Systeme or Humminguru far exceeds those from any of the vacuum systems that I’ve heard.
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Are you claiming that the Audio Systeme or Humminguru sufficiently clean LPs better than a vacuum RCM to such an affect that the results are audible?

I've never heard of either but I'm assuming they're record cleaning machines of some description.
 
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