Dusty air blower

Several years ago I got a large Hakuba air blower. I used it to try to clean my *ist D sensor. I found it ineffective, so I started doing wet cleanings, and the blower sat unused in a drawer.

Recently I got a used K-7. Today I brought out the blower to do a quick sensor cleaning. When I took the lens off I noticed some dust on the back element, so I tried blowing it off. Strangely, it only seemed to get worse. So I wet-cleaned it and then, as a test, blew again. It got dusty again. After another wet cleaning, I saw that I'd also blown a lot of dust inside the back element. Great.

I went to a well-lit mirror in the house and gave it a thorough cleaning. Then I blew the blower at it several times. I was amazed and appalled at how much dust came out. And kept coming out. I think I could have made a large section of the mirror completey opaque if I'd kept going.

I tossed the blower in the trash.

Although I understand that some dust gets inside a simple blower like that just by using it, I can't imagine that much dust coming in from just using it normally. Is it common for a blower to come as dusty inside as that from the factory? Or is it more likely that the material started breaking down and turning to dust? I've had it for about 6 or 7 years.

I'd always wondered why cleaning dslr sensors with air blowers seemed to work so well for some people but didn't work for me. Perhaps this explains it.

Greg

I bet the rubber is breaking down on the inside and crumbling away as dust.

So far I've had good luck with a Giotto Rocket that I bought for my *ist DL. It's worked fine for through the progression of a K10D and now 2 K20D's. That said, I had to wet clean the DL several times. With the K10D I eventually go an Arctic butterfly and that's worked really well. I think I wet cleaned it all of twice. Not sure I've ever wet cleaned either of the K20D's.