Ok sounds very click-baity but it’s true.
This is the reddit thread about how to clean battery acid: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroWaste/comments/dtyl6j/i_love_cleaning_battery_acid_i_bring_broken/
Basically you can clean battery acid leakage using white vinegar.
I randomly saw it while scrolling through r/all and immediately fished dug my Xbox 360 wireless controller out from the trash. Yes, it was not working for awhile but I finally tossed it because I gave up fixing it. In fact we already bought a new one a few months back to replace it. Thankfully I had not taken the trash out yet that week.
I also took out my Fujifilm instax camera which I was going to send to a shop to see if I could get it repaired. I hadn’t used it in years and it wouldn’t turn on.
So I tried it on my Xbox 360 wireless controller first but quickly realized the battery spring thingy was rusted already. So just white vinegar alone wasn’t going to help at all. I then used brasso (which was the only other metal cleaner I had) to try removing the rust.
Brasso, a nail file and lots of elbow grease later, I popped in fresh batteries and it turned on. *Cue Hallelujah song
Next I moved on to my Fujifilm Instax camera. And you can see from the picture below, thankfully it wasn’t rusted and only had some battery acid residue. So after a much quicker and less labour intensive process, it turned on!
Cleaning my devices’ battery components freakin’ resurrected them. Super thankful to the reddit post, not sure why I never thought to clean up the battery components first before tossing or sending to a repair shop but am so glad both devices are working now. yayyyyy.
