Tried ultrasonic cleaning a shutter blade assembly and got a surprise

Picked up a beat up Canon AE-1 from a garage sale for $20 last weekend. Shutter was sticky so I threw the blade assembly in my ultrasonic cleaner with some diluted Simple Green for 5 minutes. Came out looking perfect but after reassembly the shutter speeds were all off by a full stop. Lesson learned - those blades have oil inside the pivot points that gets washed out too. Now I just use lighter fluid on a q-tip for sticky blades. Anybody else wreck a shutter this way or am I the only one?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamesroberts1mo ago

Honestly, my buddy tried something close with a Nikon FE. He tossed the whole mirror box in there and it came out clean but the damping foam turned into goo. Ruined that camera for good.

jasonf171mo ago

Did you try running it again with some light oil after? I did something similar with a Pentax Spotmatic once except I put the whole body in the ultrasonic with some Dawn because I thought it was just dirty. The shutter worked fine after drying but the light meter never worked right again. Ended up just using it as a paperweight for a while before I finally fixed it with a donor body off ebay.