How to clean SF's TurboHeads inside?

I have SRTH & T2 about 5 yrs, sofar they having some dust on the reflector & lens. it is possible to clean them ?


thanks.

thats avery good question id like to know as well

Learned from painful experience...


The *ONLY* thing you should use compressed air, like a can of air duster or similar.

The reflector coating is incredibly fragile, and any sort of liquid or physical contact will likely end in tears.

With the SRTH, it is possible to remove the front lens by poking it out through the bulb hole, but again, be extremely careful. You could then gently remove the dust specs with a lens pen.

Do not be tempted to fill the bezel with water to wash everything out, it will NEVER dry properly and you will end up with condensation and corrosion on the reflector surface.

On the whole, if it's just a cosmetic issue, i'd leave well alone.

Otherwise, get in touch with Surefire's customer servive.

Guys, this is something you'd all want to stay away from. Even the compressed air suggestion will probably make matters worse.

There should be no need to clean the turboheads inside except for some lint that gets inside, usually when doing bulb swaps. If the turbohead is held upright while doing this, lint getting inside will be very minimal. If it becomes necessary to get a cleanup job I'd send the turbohead to Surefire.

Be incredibly careful with compressed "air." Lots of people wind up depositing the propellant on the things they spray, and you'll never get that stuff out of / off the reflector.

Best advice has already been given: Leave It.

If you must clean it you can flood it and wash it out with alcohol. Use 91-100% IPA. Anything less has too much water content and will be hard to get dry. This of course applies only to heads with glass windows and not plastic. Canned air can leave residue and more particulate matter than you started with.

Mark

I bought an M6 off ebay that was in good shape. Except the head was a mess. Inside of the head was a bunch of sand and some sort of build milky funk. Surefire gave me 2 options.

Option 1: Rubbing alcohol. It worked great for getting the sand out. But not for the build up.

Option 2: Send it back to Surefire for a cleaning. That is what I ended up doing. And my $190 M6 is as a good as new. Turn around time was about a week.

thanks your advise first!

send to SF, it means send to the headquarters ? or contact local agency first ?

i guess i lost the receipt a long time~, is it work?

JNewell said:

Be incredibly careful with compressed "air." Lots of people wind up depositing the propellant on the things they spray, and you'll never get that stuff out of / off the reflector.

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Isn't most compressed air just 100% diflourolethane? Even if you get it on anything it'll evaporate quickly. Only way it can damage stuff is freeze it (a quick and safe way to kill bugs btw, just invert the can and squirt away).

The propellant is not diflouroethane, usually it is tetraflouroethane with a mixture of a few other chemicals (primarily HCFCs and some other stuff) after this stuff evaporates from spraying a surface, it does leave some slight discoloration, but it does truly flash evaporate and freeze what ever it contacts.

cenz said:

thanks your advise first!

send to SF, it means send to the headquarters ? or contact local agency first ?

i guess i lost the receipt a long time~, is it work?

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Your best bet is to call their customer service for outside the U.S. in their website. They'll be glad to have you send the turbohead for cleaning. No need for receipt, just having the light or components will do. Good luck.

Lightingguy321 said:

The propellant is not diflouroethane, usually it is tetraflouroethane with a mixture of a few other chemicals (primarily HCFCs and some other stuff) after this stuff evaporates from spraying a surface, it does leave some slight discoloration, but it does truly flash evaporate and freeze what ever it contacts.

Click to expand...

i have two brands of compressed air, both list diflouroethane as component.

So is the general consensus on cleaning the Turbo heads to use Canned air or is it to use 90%-98% IPA?

I miss that old Freon based propelled gas

Is the dust affecting the beam? If so, send it to SF as has been stated above. If not, then let it be. The reflectors are too fragile. That is why they are not removable by the end-user

Flash_Gordon said:

Best advice has already been given: Leave It.

If you must clean it you can flood it and wash it out with alcohol. Use 91-100% IPA. Anything less has too much water content and will be hard to get dry. This of course applies only to heads with glass windows and not plastic. Canned air can leave residue and more particulate matter than you started with.

Mark

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I wrecked an 8X turbo head doing exactly this after I had a bulb explode inside leaving all kinds of mess. Afther I cleaned it this way the reflective surface looked great and all was clean, I let it dry for several days and all was good. Few days after that the reflective sureface started to bubble up and come loose. Six months later I had it repaired from Surefire, but it was a long and sad wait until they got around to fixing it, although for free. I used 91%.