cleaning iron parts

[Tom Griffin]

Hello Tom,
I hear you, but, having been almost ruined on one job cleaning some optical parts from an expensive "film" movie camera, when the plastic media in use turned out to be contaminated with just a few sinter balls from a previous job. It was one of those problems that the person responsible claims "just isn't possible" until it happened, I was then told by the equipment's owner that it was beyond repair and I needed ro replace the $20,000 camera. as it happened I remade the lens spacers and the threaded collar that held it all together and finally got it all back together in tolerance, but it was a bit "iffy" for a while there.

Best Regards
Rick

Rick,

Someone was using a media blaster to clean optical parts and was surprised when it failed? :huh: I doubt that cast iron machine parts would suffer the same fate.

Tom

 

[Tom Griffin]

Rick,

That's interesting. We use the same technique where I work to frost an anodized aluminum housing I designed that contains the optics for a digital microscope and it works great. We use glass beads to do the frosting. Flair, or a crescent as you call it can be a difficult thing to track down in an optical path. It took me a few re-designs of the housing and several attempts at frosting to get it right. At one point I even considered machining steps on the inside walls to scatter the light, but luckily it all worked out before going to that extreme.

Tom