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DLP mirror cleaning

post #1 of 5
Thread Starter 
I got my 82" used and apparently the old owners had the screen off to clean the mirror.

They did a piss-poor job at cleaning the mirror and there seems to be some smudging on it.

I discovered this after seeing a cobweb in the center on the screen through the ports.

Shortly after I discovered the cobwebs, the screen fogged up pretty bad between the Fresnel and lenticular screen when I left windows open on a cold and humid day with the weather in Florida on a cooling trend last week.


This weekend I'm going to take this project on myself. I know the basics of the project like using Monster screen cleaner and a microfiber cloth and have the manual to tell me how to get the screen off.

Should I spray the mirror if it is bad or just spray the cloth?

Which direction do I wipe? (With what motion)

Should I take the screen apart and clean between the lenses? Fog adheres to dirt
Edited by AnthonyB - 2/22/13 at 2:08pm
post #2 of 5

Ive had the great results cleaning the mirrors on these TVs using the following directions.  http://www.arksky.org/asoclean.htm   I don't follow it to the letter...  The solution seems to work fine without the drop of kodak solution and plain cotton rounds from the store (these do leave some lint, however a vacuum hose held about 1" above mirror picks it all up).   I'm sure it works better with the kodak solution but lacking a local supply I mixed it without and had good results.  If you'd rather buy solution I recommend Purosol.  It's easy to overlook in the directions, but I've found the air relative humidity being less than 60% to be the most critical factor regardless of cleaning solution used.   In high humidity a ghostly film is left behind no matter what you do.    Mist the cloth lightly, not the mirror.  Spraying the mirror I found gets everything too wet and the dirt/film just smears around instead of picking up.   I don't know about cleaning between the lenticular and fresnel... on 3 sets I have those two are clung together with static nothing has ever gotten in between.  Pulling them apart anywhere but in a clean room may be more trouble than it's worth.  I had one 5676 they started to separate along the top bezel (you could see it when the set was off) I tore the set apart and applied strips of gorilla tape around the edge to keep them stuck together.


Edited by mrbrian200 - 2/23/13 at 10:55am
post #3 of 5
Thread Starter 
5 hour job. Thanks for the advice. Got it clean and found that there was a lot of tobacco residue on the Fresnel lens and mirror but didn't need to take the screen apart to do that.

People really shouldn't smoke in home. What a nightmare cleaning that mirror was. I had to use 24 pads and 2 boxes of tissue..

The trick is to get the mirror clean and if it isn't clean the streaks won't wipe off with the tissue. Constantly changing tissue is extremely important. And those mirrors aren't half as fragile as I thought them to be. What a pain though. Of course this was a mirror for an 82" and it was huge.

I learned the screen is the size of a queen bed lol
Edited by AnthonyB - 2/24/13 at 6:40am
post #4 of 5

Oh Gosh tobacco residue on the fresnel sounds like a nighmare.  I bet it did take 5 hours!   I do not envy you LOL.   ...But these sets do look like a million bucks when clean/proper/good bulb its still worth the effort.

post #5 of 5
Thread Starter 
I will never be a fan of LCD/LED.. AMOLED is great if they can pack the pixels tight enough. I cringe every time I walk through a Walmart and see those displays.

Wouldn't buy a TV there anyway but they always have big pixels and the dot pitch is outstandingly bad.

Hope my 82 will stick around for a while. After this, I'm going projection.
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