An old Lagun branded Anilam Mini Wizard DRO on a Lagun knee mill. The X axis scale would just jitter randomly, showed that it had plenty of oil, crud and who knows what else in it. No scale shields on this mill, the scales are simply bolted directly to the front of the table and right side of the knee.

During partial teardown for cleaning (the table had jammed and would no longer move in X axis and was very hard to move in Y) I decided there was no risk in trying to clean out the glass scale. It already didn't work, can't make it not work.

Unscrewed one end cap, removed the slide and poured in some Simple Green straight from the bottle. Put the end cap back on and sloshed the scale back and forth a bunch. Removed both end caps and flushed with plain water, followed by lots of compressed air. Parked the scale on top of a double halogen worklight to dry out. Needed the light to continue putting the mill back together so I made it do double duty as a parts dryer.

Then I sloshed the slide around in some Simple Green, flushed with water then blew it dry. Took out the black plastic bit and carefully wiped it and the mirror opposite it with a piece of clean, white T-shirt.

After reassembling the scale it works perfectly. :-) Don't have to buy an old scale to work with the old DRO. Should probably clean the Y scale but it still works so there's the chance of making it assume the opposite condition.

I've given computer boards, power supplies, an XBox 360 and various other electronics (usually due to an unhealthy coating of cigarette smoke residue plus dust and/or pet hair) a bath and had them all work fine afterwards. 'Course I don't dunk hard drives. Had to scrub the XBox's DVD drive, then replaced the already dead laser. I also took apart an old Proctor Silex pop-up toaster oven and ran it through my dishwasher when the toaster mech would no longer latch down. After all, it didn't work so washing it couldn't ruin it. ;-) Works better than ever, the toast almost launches completely out of the slot.

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