getting glass CLEAN, how do you do it?

[Tin Can]

Good to know and Amazon sells it

Thanks for the right stuff!

I don’t know any optical shops which use that. Too time-consuming for production to “touch” each lens. For large quantity optics, glass washing machines using distilled water and a purpose-made detergent like alcojet. During polishing it’s just water. Solvents are available, but not for production use

[Drew Wiley]

I go through this hell multiple times a day. The worst is when making multiple registered sheet film color separations and masks involving meticulous cleaning of both glass and film over and over again. There is no such thing as a cloth or tissue that doesn't leave lint, though a fresh washed-out 3M dimpled microfiber lens cloth is the best I've found so far. It's quite different from any other brand I've seen. I'm just doing black and white work now, so don't have to be quite as nitpicky. But I have a true cleanroom, industrial air cleaner, triple-filtered air lines, true 100% Dacron cleanroom smock, antistatic surfaces and walls, etc, etc. ... but it's still an endless headache.

Have you tried any ultrasonic cleaning baths, Jason? Like they use for parts cleaning. Just curious. That Alcojet product you mentioned is apparently used with ultrasonics.

[Maris Rusis]

Years ago I did liquid surface tension measurements using a glass microscope slide suspended from a laboratory balance. The change in force when the edge of the slide touched the liquid could be deconvoluted into a surface tension value. The glass slide had to be ultra ultra clean. Given the resources of a well equipped laboratory what was by far the best cleaning agent? Answer: cigarette ash and distilled water! Amazing but true. I guess nobody smokes in laboratories anymore.

[Barry Kirsten]

To clean glass sample tubes used in a mass spectrometer years ago we first washed the tubes in fuming nitric acid, then a wash in copious amounts of distilled water, finished off with a dip in pure ethanol followed by time in a drying oven. The tubes ended up so clean that they showed no residual 'spectrum' from compounds previously used in them.

[Nodda Duma]

Years ago I did liquid surface tension measurements using a glass microscope slide suspended from a laboratory balance. The change in force when the edge of the slide touched the liquid could be deconvoluted into a surface tension value. The glass slide had to be ultra ultra clean. Given the resources of a well equipped laboratory what was by far the best cleaning agent? Answer: cigarette ash and distilled water! Amazing but true. I guess nobody smokes in laboratories anymore.

Makes sense.. essentially glass enjoys a nice cleaning in a mildly alkaline solution, which is what you’ll get with that.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I guess we're all still all looking for that silver bullet. I made out pretty good yesterday. Just one tiny speck on all of my 8x10 contact separations, which will easily spot out. Got quite a few of these done the while waiting out my quarantine. My wife brought home covid from the clinic when she had to fill in for the respiratory specialist who caught it, and had to stay put most of the holidays. I was barely symptomatic, but now our older house cats are recovering from it.

[Willie]

http://www.ror.net/

I use the ROR glass cleaner. I don't work for them nor do I sell the stuff.

Lenses and glass, it works well. Might take more than one try to get it completely streak free but is worth it.

When dealing with glass plates I use a seam sander or run the edges on an emery cloth bench piece, rinse and wipe well before cleaning. Helps in keeping from finger cuts.

[LabRat]

My go-to was an Xerox older product for cleaning copier glass that contained ammonium hydroxide and alcohol (still have a couple of cases of it)...

Some really filthy glass went into the ultrasonic cleaner using Simple Green cleaning solution...

Famous astro designer/manufacturer Al Nagler uses acetone,
but I figure this has to be kept away from plastics and painted surfaces...

Steve K

[Drew Wiley]

Hmmm. During my wife's previously biotech career, she had access to lots of nearly pure methyl alcohol. It was an incredible cleaner, which not even any kind of 90% alcohol solution would be, but way too expensive for ordinary use. Simple Green is one of the worst things ever concocted in an enviro sense. Tiny amounts of it kill off all kinds of aquatic and marine life once into the drainage system. Its a surfactant that coats the gills of aquatic creatures even in extreme dilutions. Banned near the water here. Acetone is flammable and attacks all kinds of things, though at least it's not toxic like lacquer thinner. Evaporates way too fast to be a decent glass cleaner. Ordinary PEC film cleaner is more practical if anything sticky is involved. Good ole 1:1:1 tricholoro film cleaner is now internationally banned for serious health reasons. Like Willie, I keep ROR on hand too. None of the above is ideal, just supplemental.

[Mark Sawyer]

I've found the main culprit in getting glass spotlessly clean isn't the cleaner used, it's the cleaning cloth.