Cleaning underside of glass in Epson V700 scanner?

[Leonard Evens]

My Epson V700 scanner glass shows very light blotches when viewed from certain angles. I don't see them when looking straight down, and they don't show up in scans. They are on the underside of the glass.

If they don't seem to be affecting my scans, would it be wise to just ignore them? Will tryiing to clean the underside of the glass likely just make matters worse?

If they keep annoying me, how difficult is it to get at the underside of the glass to clean it?

Can anyone direct me to instructions for doing so?

[Ed Bray]

I have the same issue with my V750, I have tried to ignore it to date but it must have some effect on the scans.

[tadler]

i also have something similar to that on my epson 4990..

[Doug Fisher]

I have put up some resources here:
http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/dismantling.html

If you have very good duct tape, the "tape and rip" method to remove the screw cover caps works well for most people. You have to have good sticky tape. One brand did not work for me but the 3M brand did work fine.

Doug
---
www.BetterScanning.com

[Peter Gomena]

It's easy to unscrew the scanning bed and pop it off. The sources referenced above will get you plenty of information. You just unplug everything, take off the transparency unit, pop off the four screw covers on the top of the bed, and unscrew the four screws. The bed lifts right off. A little glass cleaner and a very soft, lint-free cloth, and you're good to go. It'll take you less than 10 minutes.

Peter Gomena

[Leonard Evens]

I have put up some resources here:
http://www.betterscanning.com/scanning/dismantling.html

If you have very good duct tape, the "tape and rip" method to remove the screw cover caps works well for most people. You have to have good sticky tape. One brand did not work for me but the 3M brand did work fine.

Doug
---
www.BetterScanning.com

Thanks for the information. The screw covers are so well hidden that I wouldn't have been able to find them without the diagram.

Your second tutorial link doesn't respond. It sits there "Connecting" but doesn't connect.

[Ed Bray]

I've done mine, after unplugging the mains and USB cables and locking the movements I unplugged the transparency cable and lifted the transparency unit off the top of the bed. I tried the sticky tape trick but it did not work so I prised the plugs up gently with the tip of a scalpel blade. Undid the screws and lifted the bed off the base, microfibre cloth and some breaths later and put it all back together again. Took about 20 minutes in total. Looks great now.

[jb7]

Is this worth doing? Has anyone made before and after comparisons, and been able to measure a difference? I've noticed a slight haze on the glass on mine, and scans look they might be affected by a little flare, so if someone can link cause and effect, I might go to the trouble of fixing it-

[Ari]

Is this worth doing? Has anyone made before and after comparisons, and been able to measure a difference? I've noticed a slight haze on the glass on mine, and scans look they might be affected by a little flare, so if someone can link cause and effect, I might go to the trouble of fixing it-

I had a lot of fogging on my old 4870; when I got around to cleaning it, I didn't notice any difference in the scan quality.
It looked very unsightly, though, and it was great to finally clean it.

[architorture]

I had quite a bit of fogging on the underside of the glass on my v700 a year or two ago after it had sat in a room without air conditioning over the summer.

I was able to use the tape method to remove the screw covers, and the whole process was really very easy. I think I did do some tests re-scanning a couple images, but I didn't notice any great difference. Felt much better though to be rid of the fog anyway.

It did get me thinking though about making a custom mount to replace the glass that would support film holders for glass-less scanning. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to do.