With COVID, as we all have, we have scrubbed and bleached and cleaned every nook and cranny with every chemical we know that can kill anything and everything. However, we have been faced with a unique situation at M.R. Mold. Since COVID we have had several customers return molds to us because they have issues with rust. We've scratched our heads several times on this matter and finally contacted a chemist friend at R.D. Abbott. He walked us through our shop process. What we found is that the cleaning solutions we WERE using, Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, bleach, all contained ammonia chloride - which when used and steel handled, rusted mold components. To verify, we took M2 and 420 stainless components, wiped them with our bleach cleansers, put them in an oven at 350 degrees for 3 hours, and THEY RUSTED! We now have nothing on the shop floor that contains ammonia chloride.
We wanted to share our experience hoping to save our colleagues problems in the future.