Cleaning microscopes

Susan White <smwhitewhite [at] aim__com> writes

>... I do need to
>have it cleaned however, and was hoping to save some money by doing
>it myself, rather than having to pay an expensive technician to do
>so.  I was going to use a proprietary lens cleaner that I use to
>clean my eyeglasses, but wondered if anyone knows what the preferred
>cleaner is for microscopes.  Acetone, Toluene, ethylene glycol?  I
>was planning on using lens cleaning tissue and wondered also if
>these are appropriate for the cleaning of high quality lenses as
>those in my Zeiss?

Here at The McCrone Group, we regularly clean optical microscopes in
our labs, for our students and for sales and training. Our trainers
do not recommend using the harsh chemicals suggested for any part of
the microscope, in particular lenses. We typically use tape to lift
off most of the adhering debris and then use a non-ammonia based
window cleaner such as Sparkle to clean the lenses with a swab or
lens tissue. If there are trouble spots, acetone can be used very
sparingly and locally on these areas.

Joe Swider
Senior Research Scientist
McCrone Associates, Inc.


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:2
                  Distributed: Thursday, May 27, 2010
                        Message Id: cdl-24-2-003
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