Opening up the Innofader for Deep Cleaning

Hello All,

 

We've received several requests on how to open up the Innofader to do a deep cleaning. We recommend you only do this when absolutely necessary because excessive bending of tabs will cause them to break.

 

The tools you need are actually fairly basic - just locate an exacto knife and a needle nose pliers like the ones in the following picture:

 

Now use the exacto knife to bend each of the tabs up as shown here:

 

When you are done, the tabs should all be bent at about a 45 degree angle like this:

 

The next step is to fully straighten the tabs using a needle nose pliers by squeezing the pliers together. ***If you have difficulty straightening the tabs, it may help to try to bend them more with the exacto knife first. Remember to squeeze the pliers together because if you forcefully try to pull the tabs back, they will break!

 

When you are done straightening the tabs, the Innofader should look like this:

 

Then remove the case by lifting it off with the needle nose pliers. Lift on both sides until the case pops off

 

Once you pop off the case you should see the sensor board. Simply lift this off:

 

Now you have full access to the rails for cleaning as shown below. It will be much easier if you do not pull out the bobbin...but if you feel this is necessary, please see our stem replacement instructions here

 

Once you are done cleaning the fader, place the sensor board back into place. Align the connector with the pins as shown, and press into fit. Also for this part, you want to feel a distinct "click" once the sensor board is pushed all the way down.

 

Press the case back on. The tabs should pop all the way through. If for some reason they don't, this means that either the sensor board or rail assembly wasn't snapped properly into place. In this case, please remove the case and recheck these parts first, then press the case on again

 

The final step is to bend the 6 tabs back into place. You do this by pressing the tabs at an angle against a really hard surface. I used a vice grip here, but also a hard stone or the edge of a good tool will also work.

 

Once you have bent all of the tabs back into place, the Innofader main piece should then look like this: