Cleaning a dirty Mitutoyo Digimatic caliper

What kind of grime? The first thing that I would try is to see whether a spritzing with WD-40 and a good rubdown would clean it up. After that, rub off as much of the WD-40 as you can, as it gums things up as it ages.

If you have to use a water-based solvent (say it is gummed up water based coolant), I would suggest removing the battery or batteries, closing up the battery compartment, and cleaning with a hot damp rag, then drying it well and letting it sit for 24 hours (with the battery case open again) before putting in batteries.

Good Luck, DoN.

I have used contact cleaner (the kind safe for plastic). Works fine with no problems as yet after several uses. Also works great for cleaning gummed up indicators.

With the batteries out, the whole thing (except maybe LCD, see below) can soak in warm distilled or de-ionized water (possibly with detergent to cut grease and oil), followed by a soak and/or washing in ethanol, followed by hair-dryer or heat gun briefly, and then a day in warm dry place with slide near full extension and moved from time to time. Many people use IPA instead of ethanol; eg see some of the following URL's.

(re: avoid window cleaner)

shows ultrasonic cleaning of a PCB in isopropanol; comments say to avoid putting LCD displays in the ultrasonic cleaner. Actually, immersion of an LCD assembly at all is slightly risky, even without ultrasonics, because the "zebra connector" (the rubbery contacts between LCD display glass and the LCD driver circuit board) can trap a film of liquid which at room temperature can take weeks to dry out, so that the display has segments that fail temporarily until the contacts dry, or permanently if corrosion occurs.