Lens Paper

[Ray Uebner]

Where does everyone get their lens paper for cleaning the lens and mirrors. I was looking for a new supplier as the camara store does not carry it anymore. The laser suppliers I feel charge to much. Just wondering if there is a better place or if you use something different than Lens paper and how it works.

[Darren Null]

Cigarette rolling paper. The fine sort.

[John W. Love]

Ray, I recently ran into the same situation. I was using Kodak brand wipes for my mirrors with a diluted isopropyl alcohol solution. I searched all over for them and discovered that they are discontinued due to a lack of demand. It seems that with so many people having digital cameras and apparently the lenses have a special coating that can be scratched by those tissues. What all of the camera stores recommended were these microfiber towels that are specially designed for the very sensitive coatings on the digital cameras. I called up an old professor at the University of Texas where they have a laser there that does things only the government and the staff at UT know about and asked him what they use to clean their mirrors. He recommended the same thing saying that they could not afford to lose a $20,000 mirror to scratches and these were excellent. So, I went ahead and bought one of the better quality ones from a camera store and I am pleased with the results. I clean the mirrors in the same fashion that I did before with a diluted solution and simply let the liquid move around the mirror cleaning it, then slowly pull the cloth across the mirror without applying pressure. I see no visible scratches or wear on the lens coatings or mirror coatings.

If anyone out there believes this could be harmful to my lenses or mirrors then by all means chastise me and put me in my place.

[Rodne Gold]

I think they are called pec pads.
We use cotton swabs on sticks for the lenses and lens cleaning tissue on the mirrors

[John W. Love]

Rodne, I always used the lens cleaning tissues until about 4 months ago when I could no longer find them locally, and the ones online were in a generic (white with just black lettering saying "lens tissue") packaging. That bothered me somewhat as I couldn't find out who the manufacturer was and what quality I would receive. The last thing I wanted was something that was cheaply made with poor quality that would scratch my mirrors.

[Dave Johnson29]

The last thing I wanted was something that was cheaply made with poor quality that would scratch my mirrors.

Hi John,

Don't worry too much about scratches on the mirrors, they reduce transmission by so little it is not really a problem. The only thing that is really scratch sensitive is the final focus lens.

I will try and take a pic of some mirrors and lenses that I have here. They were given to me years back and I used them for months until I could justify spending money on new glass. When I did install new mirrors, there was no measurable difference in Wattage nor performance that I could see.

These mirrors came out of a 4000 Watt metal cutting CO2 and being 1-1/2" diameter I was able to find the best spots for my 50 Watt. I took the pics so that they highlighted dings and scratches. The mirror actually looks like a mirror when viewed full on but I wanted to show the scratches.

I took pics of fine scratches on the 1" diameter ZnSe focus lenses from the same machine and even they worked fine. I am not suggesting to be cavalier with the cleaning, just pointing out that scratches are not the worst thing that can happen to the beam delivery system.