Don's right, a blast of air is only good for removing loose dust. Once the optic has been exposed to any humidity, the dust must be loosened with liquid. I stopped buying canned air two decades ago. Bought a 5-horsepower compressor, stuck it in my garage, ran a line down to my basement workshop so I can use various airbrushes, sprayers, and pneumatic tools. Installed a filter to remove oil and particulate contaminants and a dryer to remove water vapor, followed by a secondary filter. In this instance, the only thing I have to watch out for is too much pressure when dusting-off alumnized surfaces- at 120 psi there is a real chance that the coating could be blown right off the glass, if it had adhesion problems to begin with...I use a regulator as well.* * On 5/7/07, Don J. Colton <djcolton@piol.com> wrote:
I would avoid compressed air since the cans contain a slight amount of fluid that can damage coatings the following is from my previous link: