Pixii Rangefinder Sensor and IR Glass Cleaning

Dust is inevitable.  At some point with an interchangeable lens camera, dust will get inside your camera sensor box area and it will need blown out or cleaned.  On most cameras, this isn’t an issue because once you remove the lens, you have access to the sensor cover glass which is bonded to the image sensor so you can just carefully use a blower bulb or even a wet clean kit to get any dust, oil or particles off.  I’ve cleaned sensors on cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, Nikon, Fuji and even my Leica M10 when I had it.  With the proper supplies and a steady hand, it’s not a hard job.  Then comes my Pixii A2572+ digital rangefinder camera.  I first noticed a few dust spots on some landscape images at a very small aperture.  No problem I thought, just get a blower bulb and blow it away.  Except in this case, the offending dust spots were sitting behind the IR cover glass but in front of the image sensor.  Uh oh.  Before continuing on, I just have to say that what I’m about to do will absolutely void your warranty and if you screw it up, can seriously damage your camera.  Do not attempt unless you are confident in what you are doing and do not hold myself or Pixii accountable if you do try.  This is absolutely 100% not sanctioned by Pixii.

Once I fiddled with the camera and realized I couldn’t do anything about this, I reached out to Pixii support via email.  I prefaced my email saying that I didn’t want to send the camera back to France to have it cleaned and was hoping there was a way I could do it myself, fully understanding that if I do something stupid it and break something, it’s on me.  Thankfully, they responded.  The reply started with the typical “It is not recommended…” message.  I expected this since pulling a complicated camera apart should not be done by untrained people.  I am one of those untrained people who likes to tinker.  What surprised me though was when I read on, it continued with “… but since you have particles which have migrated to the visible zone, it’s worth trying.”   Then the email went on with an explanation about how the ‘dark chamber with IR glass’ is attached over top of the sensor mount with adhesive and there are a few ways to remove it and how to proper clean it.  Now I had hope!  So I gathered my tools and got my workstation ready.

Next up was removing the 4 screws that held the bayonet lens mount on and the metal spacer shim beneath that.  Once that was off, I had little more room to work.  I noticed that on either side of the ‘dark chamber’ were small holes.  My curved hook tool was the perfect size to carefully insert in and start to carefully wiggle the chamber side to side and vertically.  I could both feel and hear the adhesive start to loosen.  I repeated this on the other side of the dark chamber as well.  In the end, it took about 8 minutes of carefully lifting and prying of the dark chamber.  When I finally had the adhesive defeated, I took a 2nd 90-degree hook and now inserted one in each side of the chamber and lifted straight up.  The dark chamber piece with attached IR cover glass easily lifted off and then I just had to push on the rangefinder cam arm a bit and the dark chamber and cover glass was out!

Now I had full access to the sensor.  With the blower bulb and my sensor brush, everything was cleaned up in no time and re-installation was a snap.  Pixii said for any debris welded to the sensor, IPA could be used to carefully clean it.  I didn’t see anything after I blew/brushed it off, so I just put everything back.  Within a few minutes the camera was back together and I was able to test it out with great success.

I can see a single spot I missed, but for now that is good enough.  While this was a bit nerve racking, I’m ecstatic that I was able to clean this myself without sending it half way across the world.  Kudos to Pixii for even telling me how to attempt this repair.  I have emailed them about 5 times since owning the camera though, so they probably are just tired of dealing with me!  Either way, I got the information I needed and got everything cleaned out.  In the future it would be nice if they had an easier way to get the dark chamber out by not using adhesive to hold it down.  Hopefully that is an engineering change they could make.  So to bring an end to a long story, if you have a Pixii rangefinder and end up with dust behind the IR cover glass, it is possible to clean yourself.  Not the easiest job, but doable.  I should also say that the model I own is the APS-C sensor sized Pixii A2572+.  I don’t know if this would be the same method on either the original A1572 or the newer full frame A3410.  Again, attempt this at your own risk.