Using ultrasonic cleaner for slide mounts

[vadim_makarov]

Has anybody tried to clean glass slide mounts in an ultrasonic cleaner to get

rid of visible specks of dirt stuck to the glass?

 

I'm using Gepe PRO VR mounts (they consist of a plastic frame, aluminum foil and

glass; the glass surface is rough on the film side to prevent Newton fringes).

My normal procedure for cleaning is to blow compressed air, look at the glass

through a 4x loupe against a lit background, and scrub the remaining visible

pieces of dirt with a scalpel. The procedure works but it is too slow. The

mounts come from Gepe fairly clean, but nevertheless the glass in each half of

the mount usually contains some visible dirt pieces that I need to scrub off.

Those dirt pieces at the edges of the frame near the foil can be especially

troublesome.

 

I am thinking of trying an ultrasonic cleaner that we have in our physics lab

(it's probably not the cheapest one). I would keep the mounts wet after

cleaning, and then dry each of them with compressed air in order to prevent

drying marks. The problem is I'm not familiar with ultrasonic cleaners. I'm

mainly concerned that the procedure may damage the slide mount itself, perhaps

in a way I cannot immediately see. For example, there is a story on photo.net

about plastic blades in an old shutter chemically altering and becoming sticky a

week after ultrasonic cleaning... I don't want that to happen to the slide mounts.

[evan_goulet]

One of the things that an ultrasonic cleaner can do is impart quite a bit of mechanical damage to materials. We use them in our lab to separate bundles of carbon nanotubes for suspension in water with surfactants. I have also used them previously in the cleaning of medical implants. It is a fairly aggressive process. We used to do a quick check of the sonics by placing a sheet of aluminum foil into the bath. The mechanical movement of the water would shred the foil. I am not sure that I would be putting any slides that I cared about into the cleaner.

[vadim_makarov]

Clarification: I'm not talking about putting film into the cleaner. I'm talking about cleaning halves of slide mounts <em>before</em> I put the film in them. The aluminum foil in Gepe mounts is 0.1 mm thick. The rest is glass (plain glass, no coating) and plastic (probably the same plastic Gepe uses for all other mounts).

[jtk]

Interesting idea. Tell us how it works out.

 

I managed production of several 32-projector commercial AV entertainments (Hawaii Experience, New York Experience etc)...we used GEPE for some purposes, WESS for others, and they all required cleaning because all came with traces of oil on glass.

 

Someone came up with the bizarre idea to use a home dishwashing machine. We attached hundreds (?) of alligator clips to the dishwasher's rubberized dish racks and clipped each to a mount. Multiply 32 projectors by 80 (low capacity Kodak trays) and multiply again by four ( backup sets) to see how many slides my enslaved hippies cleaned :-)

 

Home dishwasher fluid did beautifully...might have been "Calgon."

 

This was much more affordable than the time required to carefully clean each individual mount.

[vadim_makarov]

John: it probably was not oil but <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000PXq">fog that is a product of glass contacting air, which inevitably appears with time</a>. Funny you decided to clean it: I don't think this fog affects anything. I just leave it alone. In fact, when I scrub off dirt specks, the fog is also removed and redistributed in parts of the glass where I scrub. It has no visible effect on projected image.