Opti-Clean Polymer

[Tony]

Does anyone have a comment on this (besides John Sonley ) on if this would work on plain glass before coating DCG. Would it effect adhesion? Wonder if it has a residue? Came across this looking at some cleaners at work and thought it was interesting. OK now bad to work

Also read this http://www.wfu.edu/~bonin/Microscope/Ul ... Slides.htm

FIRST CONTACT™ Polymer Solutions clean and protect nanostructures, precision surfaces, optics, glass, fused silica, silicon, crystals, non-linear crystals, metals, Ge, ZnSe, NaCl, KBr, KRS-5, first surface mirrors and telescope optics. First Contact™ polymers also clean and protect diffraction gratings, phase masks, and pinholes! Smooth or rough, flat or curved; AR and reflective coatings, all surfaces can be safely, easily cleaned and protected with FIRST CONTACT™. The fluid solution conforms to any contour, the polymer film releases easily. GET 'NEXT GENERATION' CLEAN! PREVENT RECONTAMINATION!
FIRST CONTACT™ is a non-toxic, inert polymer designed to remove dust, fingerprints, residues and contaminants from delicate, sensitive, and precision surfaces without scratching or damage. First Contact™ polymer film protects optics from physical and chemical damage in assembly, shipping and storage.

Note this product is not suitable for plastic lenses & optics.
FIRST CONTACT™ Polymer optics cleaner is easy and economical to use and is available to buy off stock in 15ml bottles. There are a number of other sizes available by special order including large kits and spray applictors.
Please email us for further details on any of the other packages available.
Full details of the product can be found here Photonic cleaning.
Instructions for use of this product can be found here

Price includes VAT and Shipping


Quote from customer John M Sonley - I've just completed the exercise of treating all my 1st surface holography mirrors in my current holography table set-up with First Contact - fantastic results!
The small red dot produced on each mirror from my unexpanded 33mW HeNe is far less visible now - suggesting less scattered light and a much cleaner surface.
I left the polymer to dry and harden for 24 hours and it came away from each optical surface so easily.
See and buy Johns holograms here - http://www.johnsonley.myzen.co.uk/interests.html
http://shop.stanwaxlaser.co.uk/first-co ... an-1-p.asp

[dcgman]

This seems to be one long advert.
opticlean can be obtained much cheaper than than your advertised price of £26 elsewhere on the web.

[Jeffrey Weil]

If you want a simple way to clean glass before coating here's what I do for resist, and I expect that would work for any other coatings we use in holography.

A good scrub by hand with some regular soap and a sponge, then a rinse, standard tap water. There is no need for de-ionized here no matter what your coating.

An overnight soak in straight pool chlorine. Only leave it in overnight. If you leave it for more than 24 hours it will start to etch the glass. You can only use plastics for everything, the tank, the tray that holds the glass everything. I had a plastic tray I cut slots in for the glass to stand up in. Plastic chains let me lower into and remove it from the tank.

You can keep the chlorine for many months with a lid on the tank.

Then put the glass in a standard washing machine fed either with tap water or de-ionized depending on your needs. Use standard dishwasher soap.

Run it again without any soap but a very small amount of a wetting agent. I've used both off the shelf dishwasher brands and photo-flo with success. If you use photo-flo use much much less than you would expect.

Do not open the machine until the glass is totally dry.

You can make pretty much anything work with holography if you try and set things up that way from the start. Always try to use standard stuff from regular stores before you go with special crap you need to order and have shipped. You might be right in the middle of an image when you run out of something. It's much easier to run to Walgreens or CVS to get what you need. Cheaper too.

I try to base my system on as many materials as I can get at the 24 hour stores in my neighborhood. I'm in production, if I drop a bottle of something I can't just wait 7-10 working days to get a replacement.

Jeff Weil
NorthBeach Holography Inc.

[dcgman]

Anyways- what is this doing in the DCG section? Shouldn't it be in the 'Off-Topic' or 'For Sale' section?

[Jeffrey Weil]

Anyways- what is this doing in the DCG section? Shouldn't it be in the 'Off-Topic' or 'For Sale' section?

I think the original poster was asking this before he coated DCG.

Jeff W

[Tony]

Thanks Jeff. Do you have a criteria on glass before you coat that tells you that it is super clean? For example do you look at how the glass sheaths? Or have you done this enough to where you just trust the process?
I have tryed bleach, MA, micro 90 and TSP (not all at once) but there are some pieces of glass that just don't act right. They tend to bead up when I remove them from the tank. I always wonder if there is some contaimiate that I am overlooking. I am always looking at different ways to clean glass. It's one of the things that make DCG fun.
Cheers,
Tony

[Martin]

I always wonder if there is some contaimiate that I am overlooking. I am always looking at different ways to clean glass. It's one of the things that make DCG fun.

Your problem sounds familiar to me, Tony. I suspect a great many cleaning products (e.g. for dishwashing) contain silicone oil as a anti-foaming agent. Maybe some of the cleaning pads/sponges have it as well. Anyway, once this stuff in on the glass, it's very hard to remove it.

[kyodai]

As an amteur the polymer sounds "promising" to me. Maybe worth just giving it a shot if you can get it cheap. I never thought that much about cleansing, just treating my plates with benzene and a dry cloth so far but reading through all this i get the feeling i can improve when i think more about it. Right now i lack the funds to do any expensive experiments, but maybe imma get some polymer wonder cleaning stuff for x-mas.

[dannybee]

can you do the same idea with hydrogel or weak coat of pva or gel
The preparation of the hydrogel has been described elsewhere.13 In short, 2.5 g of gelatin was dissolved in 100 mL of a 10% aqueous solution of PVA. Concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCl, 0.05 mL) was added, and the resulting dispersion was stirred (using a overhead stirrer at 100 ± 5 rpm) at 70°C for a half-hour to carry out the esterification reaction between PVA and gelatin. The thick dispersion so obtained was converted into a membrane by the conventional solution casting method. The resultant membrane was washed thoroughly with distilled water to remove the HCl and was stored in a dessicator at 37°C.

[Tom B.]

Caution: try first on optics you don't care about!

I've noticed that mixing a few drops of glycerol into a small batch of PVA glue (Elmer's white glue) prevents it from drying hard - a coating of the mixture forms a rubbery film that's easily peelable. I wondered for an instant if this might be useful for optics cleaning before being distracted by other more mundane concerns. I imagine it might leave a residue due to additives in the glue - maybe a pure PVA solution + glycerol would be better?