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> I don't think there really is one general solvent. When I began
> doing biological microscopy about 20 years ago the immersion oils
> all seemed to be made of the same stuff and easily cleaned with just
> about any organic solvent stronger than ethanol. This is no longer
> the case. For instance, the new Nikon oil for TIRF gets thick and
> is completely impervious to any of the aqueous cleaners. It is
> resistant to what we practically considered to be the universal
> solvent of organics, acetone, and also to ethanol. But dehydrated
> methanol works great. On the other hand, the Zeiss oils, when
> fresh, clean up fine with their aqueous cleaning solutions and when
> old and dripped all over the turret and such, with acetone. The old
> standby in the lab, Cargill Labs type DF, cleans up with any
> inorganic solvent. Of course, in one lab the gospel was xylene
> because, well, we scientists tend to be superstitious or
> traditional. As for ether, one benefit of using it, we were told
> years ago by someone at Zeiss, is that it evaporates so fast that it
> reduces the chances of dissolving the glue holding in the front
> glass of the objective. Is this really a problem? I've never had
> one of these front lenses come loose. Now I tend to use 1:1 acetone/
> methanol and cotton swabs and/or lens tissue following in the
> footsteps of Spectraphysics service who uses this to clean their
> mirrors and gives us average power of a Watt with 100 fs pulses at
> 910-920 nm, so I follow by example.
> -Michael Cammer
>
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