Recently moved with our printer to Hong Kong, I’ve not used it yet as I’m having a hard time finding a source for 90+% isopropyl alcohol. There is a local store selling 75%, will that be strong enough for cleaning prints and also mirror maintenance (which my aging F1+ seems to need often), or should I continue to look for stronger IPA?
Try a Pharmacy or medical supply store. 91% is pretty common (at least here in the US) as an antiseptic.
If you don’t have a choice, 75% will probably work for cleaning but may require longer soak times.
I would not use 75% for cleaning the mirrors. Unless it was made with distilled water it is likely to leave streaks.
Lastly, the primary mirror in a Form1 printer has the reflective coating on the exposed surface (front) of the piece of glass. That coating is a very thin, soft layer of Aluminum. It is easily abraded. Each time you wipe the mirror down, you remove some of the reflective coating and you create micro scratches. There’s no reason the mirror would need to be cleaned more frequently as a function of the age of the printer. If it seems like you need to clean the mirrors more frequently because the printer is old, I suspect the real reason is that the mirror has been degraded by prior cleanings and as a result it takes less new accumulated dirt on the mirror before the mirror doesn’t reflect well enough to print reliably. So if this is indeed the case, I would bet that replacing the primary mirror with a new one would significantly reduce the frequency of cleaning.
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