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Hot take: you don't need a $300 ultrasonic cleaner to get a mirror box spotless
Honestly I see guys on here dropping 300 bucks on a big ultrasonic tank for mirror boxes and I think it's overkill. Last month I cleaned a beat up Pentax K1000 that sat in a garage in Fresno for 12 years, and I got the mirror box and shutter cage spotless with a $9 soft brush, some naphtha, and about 40 cotton swabs. Took me 3 hours but the mirror snapped back clean and the shutter fired right at 1/1000 on my tester. The tank guys will say swabs can't reach the gear teeth, and fair, but you can pull the mirror box in 20 minutes on most of these bodies and just clean it by hand. Tbh the ultrasonic is great for lens helicoids and aperture blades, I'm not knocking it for that. Has anyone here actually measured a real difference on mirror boxes after switching to a tank, or are we just buying tools because they look professional?
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diana30223d ago
Pulling the mirror box is the part people skip too. On a K1000 it's like six screws and the whole cage lifts right out, then you can actually see what you're doing instead of fishing a swab around the mirror at a bad angle. Naphtha on a brush gets the old grease out of the corners just fine, and the swabs finish it off. The trick is not flooding it, because if you soak the whole box you push grit into the shutter and then you're pulling that apart too. So yeah, if you're gonna hand clean it, pull it first, clean it dry on the bench, then re-lube the spots that need it. The tank just does the same thing with less control over where the crud goes.
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