Soaking in Acetone

[Kevan Hashemi]

A customer asks, "Is it okay to put the whole transmitter in acetone?"

Yes, that's okay. Acetone does not harm our transmitters. In fact, we recommend acetone as a cleaning agent. You can soak our silicone-encapsulated transmitters in acetone for at least a week with no apparent effect on the silicone nor harm to the transmitter. We present our tests of silicone with acetone at the page below.

https://www.opensourceinstruments.com/Electronics/A3013/Flexible_Wires.html#Silicone%20and%20Solvents

Our assumption is that you will be soaking in acetone to dissolve dental cement, in preparation for re-implanting a transmitter in another host animal. When dental cement dissolves in acetone, it forms a sticky residue. Some of our customers are convinced that the residue, if left on the leads and transmitter body, will cause severe skin irritation in the host animal. After the soak, we recommend you remove all sign of this residue by rinsing the transmitter twice in clean acetone. By "rinse" we mean, "put in a jar with acetone and shake." Once you rinse off the residue, you have only our silicone remaining, which is an unrestricted medical grade surface designed for long-term implantation.