My girlfriend bought a brand new microscope and right out of the box, it was dirty. She tried all the methods and we kept seeing a smudge, finally worked up the courage to open it and the smudge was on the prism itself. And there are no videos on that because everyone keeps saying that you shouldn’t open the head of the microscope and to never touch the prism or the mirror. Can you please make a video on that?

Excellent practical cleaning advice. Made a world of difference to my microscopy after a proper clean following this video. Thanks heaps!

Thank you for the video. I was so scared to clean anything that I stopped using it for a while just to read and watch cleaning videos. The microscope I purchased had no cleaning instructions at all and I am new to this and didn’t want to break it. Thank you this video is clear and to the point. I appreciate it.

I like your observation "smaller the eyepiece the smaller the iris". glad to have found your channel! thanks

Great cleaning and trouble shooting video that covers all the parts of the microscope including the camera. Thank you! I'll be able to clean my camera and scope properly now and get on with looking at my soil and compost extract samples.

Excellent instruction vid. Never skimp on cleaning. You'll never get excellent results with dirty optics. One small point in addition - you may have a filter glass ( likely blue or green) slotted into your condenser. Remember to clean it and try to handle by its edge to avoid fingerprints.

RULE 1: Always remember to BLOW THE DUST OFF WITH AIR as the first step. Why ? Because dust is abrasive. If you wipe a dusty lense, you will scratch your lense and lense coating by dragging the abrasive dust on the lense surface, digging groves into the lense glass, just like dragging a diamond drill bit on a glass window. Lense glass is often very soft and tender... easy to scratch. Lense coatings are fragile too. Remove as much dust as possible by blowing air profusely onto the lense surface first. RULE 2 : Use LENSE PAPER, NOT KIMEWIPES or anything else. Kimwipes are fine for cleaning slides, but too abrasive for lenses. ONLY use lense paper or glueless cotton swabs (if there is glue such as in standard Q-tips from your nearby drugstore, you will end up smearing hard to remove glue on your lense). RULE 3 : Whenever you wipe a lense (after having thouroughly blown the abrasive dust off with air from all possible angles) DO NOT WIPE IT DRY on the first pass/passes . Moisten the lense paper first with lense cleaning fluid or lab grade ethanol and then wipe the lense. Moisten the tip of the cotton swab with cleaning fluid if you use a cotton swab instead of lense paper. Don't wipe the lense dry... Dust blowers remove a good amount of dust but some amounts of dust will still remain on the lense surface... If you moisten the lense paper/cotton swab, the cleaning fluid will act as a lubricant, preventing leftover dust from scratching the lense. Alternatively, you can blow air from your mouth (don't spit though) and this will leave a thin film of distilled water (yes there is distilled water vapor in your breath) on the lense surface, acting as a lubricant before you wipe the lense surface. Distilled water is the most gentle solvent to clean lenses but it's also the least efficient when you come across hard to remove greasy grime, so you might still have to step up your game with real cleaning fluid or organic solvents if water doesn't work at first to remove all the dirt. If you really have to use Kimwipe because you don't have lense paper, MOISTENING the kimwipe with cleaning solution will at least prevent most of the possible scratching. Wathever you do, avoid wiping a lense dry. Use cleaning solution as a lubricant. RULE 4 : When you wipe, DO NOT PRESS HARD. Pressing hard will increase chances of scratching the lense. If the dirt is too stubborn to be easily removed in one pass , procceed in repeating cleaning steps multiple times rather than pressing hard on the lense you are wiping. Always repeat "lubrication" of the new lense paper sheet with cleaning fluid if you repeat wiping multiple times. If it's still is very stubborn dirt, try a harder solvent to clean such as hexanes or even xylene (CAUTION: Use as little quantity of those hard solvents as possible, AND ONLY put the solvent on the lense paper, NOT DIRECTLY on the lense (see Rules 10 and 6 for more details) then clean with normal cleaning fluid or ethanol). RULE 5: DON'T BE CHEAP WITH LENSE PAPER. One lense paper sheet per cleaning pass please (you can use different corners of the same lense paper sheet to save on lense paper). But lense paper is much much cheaper than the lense you are trying to clean. A lab-grade/professionnal microscope objective can cost anywhere from 200$ to 10 000 $ (most mid-grade professionnal objective cost around 2000$ each). Most microscope eyepieces cost from 200$ to 1000$ each. So use multiple lense paper sheets if you have to. Don't be greedy on lense paper because if you scrach a microscope lense, it will end up costing much much more than what extra quantities of quality lense paper/cotton swabs and cleaning fluid would have cost you in the first place. Also the more you touch a lense paper sheet with your hands, the more contamined it becomes with body oils from your hands... So uses non-powdered disposable gloves to avoid smearing body oil from your hands onto the lense paper and then on your lenses. At the very least, wash your hands with plenty of soap before touching lense paper of manipulating lenses. RULE 6 : MOISTEN lense paper, DON'T DROWN OR SOAK IT DAMPED in cleaning fluid. Otherwise you will have to wipe the lense dry many more times to make it dry and clean. Increased number of wiping passes increases chances of scratching. Also, put the cleaning fluid on the lense paper/cotton swab, not directly on the lense. If you put the fluid directly on the lense, some of the solvents used in cleaning might dissolve the lense cement that holds the lense in place and also can create a cement glue smear on the lense. RULE 7 : Now the you removed all major dirt with blowing dust and wiping moist lense paper. Only now can you wipe with dry lense paper, but don't overdo it. But blow off the lense paper lint from then lense with air first if there is some, then wipe dry, repeat air blowing the lense for the final step. RULE 8 : Avoid canned air... It oftens leaves a hard to remove oily residue on lenses (the canned air propellant il oily and tough to remove). Use a manual dust blower instead. If you HAVE to use canned air, DO NOT SHAKE THE CAN (that will mix the propellant with the canned air (trifluoroethan is the "canned air") and will leave a residue on the lense). Also hold the can in a vertical position so propellant stay in the bottom of the can. It also helps to give the can one short purge to remove oily residue from the dispensing straw before you then use it on your lense. RULE 9 : Don't overdo it with cleanliness... The least often you have to wipe a lense, the less likely you are to scratch it. PREVENTION is the best medicine... Use a dust cover on your eyepieces and a dust cover for your whole microscope. This will prevent the lense from getting quickly dirty/dusty. RULE 10 : Avoid harsh solvent (xylene can dissolve lense cement. Ammonia based solvent will ruin titanium-oxide based coatings (so if you HAVE to use Windex to clean lenses, use the ammonia-free Windex variety). Acetone, dichloromethane/methylene chloride/chloroform will dissolve most plastics and rubber it touches. Avoid touching any plastic parts of cemented parts with these hard solvents (thus the importance of using only vey small quantities of these, and only moistening the lense paper or cotton swab but not directely the lense or part you are trying clean). The safest is #1- Distilled water, #2 Lense cleaning fluid, #3 Ethanol or Methanol, #4 isopropyl alcool, #5 Hexanes. RULE 11: Don't try to clean any internal parts or internal lenses on a microscope. NEVER EVER EVER do this (don't ask me how I know). The lense prisms inside the microscope head are coated with very soft, tender and fragile coating that is very easy to inadvertantly remove of scratch (don't ask me how I know). At the factory, microscope heads are assembled inside a clean room with HEPA filtation apparatus and anti-static technics and vacuum chamber. If you only just open your microscope head, chances are will will unknowingly introduce more dust contamination in the microscope head than you were trying to remove in the first place. Don't do it, not worth it. Not for the heafty price of a new microscope head. RULE 12: When you wipe a lense clean, do it in a spiral pattern, starting from the center and then progressing towards the periphery. That way if you are unfortunate enough to scratch the lenses, chances are the scratch will not be in the center of the lense but rather in the periphery where you are less likely to see it. Hope this helps.. Cheers.

I had tried a 100 times to clean the eyepiece with soft lab cloth and alcohol also, but the stain was always persistent. Now after watching this video. I tried cleaning with earbud and it worked just perfect. Thanks for such a good and systematic approach to cleaning microscope.

It's really neat watching someone who knows what they are doing

Need more videos about lense cleaning.... 🙏

The unmistakable voice of experience. Excellent!

What an incredibly useful tutorial! Thank you for posting!

Just solved my microscopy problem. Thank you.

Thank you! New microscope and my 40X was a blur, didn't know mine had an iris, it cleared right up.

The Micro Cosmos microscope was awesome for me. I definitely dirtied my leneses and ruined images I was trying to get. This video is wonderful and will help me out.

Thank you very much for a good tutorial!

Mr Thomas, excellent tutorial, well done.

Your a amazing teacher , great personality.

Very helpful! Thank you.

Amazing video. Good information. Thank You. 👍

My dumb ass got caustic soda on an objective lens 😁 thanks for you help EDIT: fortunately it was the condenser, which I was planning replace anyways. My objectives do need cleaning though so this is still very helpful!

Hugely helpful video...even though I have been using binoculars backwards for quickie magnification for probably 50 years it did not cross my mind to reverse the eyepiece to check the 40x. Filthy it was...

Great advice

i just got an AmScope Microscope with X2500 zoom and on the left side of the lenses there was a spec nd this helped me thank you!

This was very helpful. Thank you for making the video.

Thanks a lot ❤

Lenspapier is schuurpapier.Ik gebruik vetvrije watten ,

Excellent video!

Your awesome!! Some stupid bacteria kept getting in the way

Well done. Good video.

Thanks so much for that video!

Thanks dear

Super content Thanks

Solid! Top KEK!

Great video

Could you post a video dismantling the internal optics of zoom objectives of a stereo microscope please? Internals inside the tube like housing of the zoom objective?

Absolutely superb video!

Thanks this video helped me

Thank you for the great video. Definitely helps a lot. :-)

I just bought 2 circa 1978 Bausch & Lomb Stereoscope 4 heads that have been in a filthy shed -- one with the eye pieces out. For years. Maybe decades. I think mice procreated in there. So cute. He's talking about if you have "a" speck on the lense😆😂🤣😅😁👍 These are salvaged from a machine used for slicing tissue. I would need both because the 2 eyepieces I have are 15W.F., and the one head is .7x - 3x, the other is .7x - 30x. I'm looking at debris collected from a pristine, time specific surface, after a meteor explosion. But I'm broke, not a real scientist, and not one real scientist in my region with 7 universities, 4 museums, and 100 high schools sees enough scientific value in this to either examine this or provide guidance and or use of a freaking scope

Спасибо за видео:) Thanks for the video

Thx man! :)

I just opened a new Bebang microscope. (It’s for my nephew & me. ) I see a smudge on all magnifications. On the 4x it’s less noticeable, it’s smaller in scale perhaps. Should I take apart the eye piece, I have already cleaned the outer lens.

"Others" say NOT to use a cotton swab, but do use a polyester swab - what about that? Thanks for the tutorial.

I just got the same microscope- first thing i do? Dip my 40x objective lol Thank you i never knew about "lense fluid"

4:33 Isn't it safer to vacuum. or Can we also vacuum instead of blowing air.

Super thanks

Thanks you!

hi there i have a binocular stereo microscope, it have quite diferent position of object in each eye, blur image, kind of just can not make the object a whole piece. is there any tutorial can help?

I wouldn't say like new. My brand new microscope lenses must have been dipped in swamp water. The mirror on the inside was all covered in white dust.

the video is good but never use a swab on the sensor only the air pump .

Hi! I just bought a microscope just as a hobby. I know absolutely nothing about microscopes. My microscope came with a small bottle of oil. I didn't know microscopes needed to be oiled. How do you oil a microscope? How often? I'm afraid to use my microscope until I know more about how to take care of it...

Thaaaaaank yooouuuu

hey sir, i have a question, with the cleaning strategy for the 40x objective, does the same rule apply if it is or has been wet?, also another question can i use the same lense cleaning fluid on my eye pieces that you would use for a camera?

great full for this vidio

Can I clean the immersion objective lens by Encompass Cleaner ( part # 004 ) ?

My camera also has a reduction lens - would you recommend using lens cleaner on this or not?

❤❤❤

When he said... don't keep this chip exposed... there was a sense of guilt that overcame me... wow... thanks Dad..

What concentration of alcohol should be used

linse fluidics :) hahaha

My binocular microscope keeps showing plain white color

Wait! Who puts mascara on the eyepiece of their microscope?!?!

Eat your cereal

Stop Biting your finger NAILS

1sti wish i could afford the soil food web scopeby lw scientific but had to settle for omax with integrated 1.3mp camera in and it limits what i could do. Epifloresence is where it's at in a cannabis sponsored grower on Instagram and been studying soil biology for years and is my dream to get one of your microscope one day y look at compost soil extracts teas etc... Great job great technology i love your o microscope