Prepping Glass

Cristiano Perrucci's Method

1. - hand wash for a few a minute with sponge and dish detergent
2. - soak in 50% domestic bleach for 6-8 hrs
3. - wash in hot tap water (~45C) scrubbing with a sponge for a minute
4. - final wash in R.O. water for a few seconds
5. - dry with a towel
6. - final cleaning with Glassex (Windex in the USA?)

this procedure works fine for MBDCG

If I'm recycling old homemade plates, I start cleaning procedure from step 3 until all old emulsion has been washed out.

Cleaning plates is the most boring task of DIY holographic plates, I liked to minimize time spent for this crucial step.

Hans' Method

I have had great results with this method:

Previously I had great trouble with sticking gelatin to glass by silane'ing the glass with a solution of silane+acetone. I have found a new formula (from Bjelkhagens book) that seems to work much better for me. A mix is made with 40% silane + 45% Isopropylalcohol + 5% water. After 24 hours, this mix is further diluted with Isopropylalcohol to 5%. Then rub the glass thouroughly with this liquid and let it rest for about two hours. I then cleaned the glass further with glassex before application of the gelatin.

I always take 1cc of this solution and then add 19cc of IPA. The diluted solution can be used for about two days. Just rub it on a plate with a towel. You will see a white haze on the plate. I then put the plate away for a couple of hours and clean with a ammonia based glass cleaner. If you wait more than a day before cleaning the plate with glass cleaner, the white haze becomes very difficult to remove.

I have been using kitchen gloves. I also use goggles and a painter's mask with carbon filters. The undiluted Silane is nasty stuff. You don't want to get that on your skin or breathe it. Mix it in a fume cuboard if you can. I mix it always outside the house.

Adam's Methods

I soak my plates overnight in 10% potassium hydroxide aqueous/isopropyl solution (1 part alcohol per 6 parts of water) . I rinse them in warm tap water (rubbing with latex gloves - one side of the glass will make a sound when hydrophilic), rinse in DI/distilled water and wipe with towel paper until dry, wipe with a clean cloth (of silk for example) and blow with canned air. 2 days ago after such treatment, courtain coating (10% culinary gelatin, at 80deg.C), hardening in alum/formaldehyde (2 batches) and curing at 60deg.C I left my plates in DI water for 24 hours (to remove traces of a hardener). Today the gelatine is still fine and can be removed only by scratching with a nail.

I hope it helps.

The other way to clean plates would be soaking them in car battery acid solution with 10% potassium dichromate added. It worked with lab glass, but I haven't tried it for holographic plates. This mixture is supposed to be cancerogenic, so maybe it would be better to use KOH solution if possible.

Contents

JohnFP's Method

For my standard DCG I soak the plates in 5% HydroChloric Acid at least 12 hours. I then scub them with a plastic wooly used to clean no stick pans in the Acid. I then put them in running how water and scrub them again in the hot water with the plastic wooly. I then set them in a rack and before they dry completely I wipe them with a fresh clean paper towel. It is important that there is a very little moisture on the glass during this wiping. I then blow them off with air.