"The blades cannot be removed from the motor."

Incorrect. The moulded plastic fan blade can be removed fairly easily.

Once the fan's plastic grills have been unscrewed and removed, grasp the round centre of the daisy-shaped fan blades and gently pull it directly away from the motor shaft. It can also be pushed off from behind, once you get it started. Note that the motor shaft has a flat edge along one side that corresponds with the shape of the hole in the plastic fan blade part. These need to be re-aligned before (gently) pushing the fan blade back on to the motor shaft when re-assembling.

Over time, airborne particulate accumulates on the fan blades' edges and inside the unseen hollows at the back of its round centre, which faces the motor. The fan's grills also grime up, so it's good to take all the plastic parts off to clean them occasionally. I power wash them with hot water.

Note: Re-posting this comment with minor edits after it was mislabelled as 'spam' and deleted by the site's robot earlier .

Follow-up to my earlier comment under Step 10:

A closer look (zoomed in) at the photo illustration for Step 10 provides a helpful view of the back side of the detached lens assembly, which would normally be positioned directly in front of the camera's sensor.

The interface point between these two component parts (lens assembly / sensor) suggests the possibility that a gap could form between them if/when the camera gets bumped, struck, dropped, etc, and thus provide a potential entry point for random dust / lint to migrate inside, which I suspect is what happened to my own HX80 camera. I bought it 4 years ago (2018) and it's served me well until just a few days ago, when the blur-spot issue arose.

The insight into the camera's internal construction shown in Step 10's illustrative photo gives me hope that the dust spec likely causing the blurred spot on my camera's photos and videos is located between the lens assembly & sensor and can be blown away using compressed air, once I manage to open up the camera.

Problem:

A small blur, just off-centre, began showing up in my SONY Cyber-Shot DSC HX80's photos and videos a couple days ago.

At first I assumed it was something on the lens, but that was not the case. On closer inspection, the blur appears due to a bit of lint somewhere within the lens & sensor assembly. I infer this because when toggling the camera's telescoping lens between its widescreen and zoom positions, the blur became smaller, darker and somewhat 'in focus' as a dark silhouette with a short strand of fibre visibly protruding from its small indistinct mass.

The 'fix' described in this particular repair section is for replacing the frontal lens with new one, but rather than replacing the lens mechanism, which still works fine, what I would like to do is open the camera up enough to locate the bit of lint causing the blur and be able to remove it.

Hoping this will be possible once the frontal lens is completely detached from the camera..!