Ultrasonic cleaners ?

mmcmdl

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I miss being able to throw my parts into ours at work so looking for a smallish one for use at home . I see Vevors , HFs and others for decent prices . Anyone have pros or cons on these brands ? Will be used on carbs and other small tractor parts .
 
I have a no name 15L unit which works quite well. Well enough to strip the AR coating off my glasses. Whoops! The coating just slid off! I hadn't expected that. Works well for other stuff too.

Need to pay attention to the chamber dimensions, they aren't specified clearly in many cases. Also Watts. I find they are optimistic about their heaters, they come up to temperature rather slowly. I usually preheat the water first. But it does maintain the temperature, at least at 50C.
 
I miss being able to throw my parts into ours at work so looking for a smallish one for use at home . I see Vevors , HFs and others for decent prices . Anyone have pros or cons on these brands ? Will be used on carbs and other small tractor parts .
I'll be watching this thread. Like you I've been interested in one for some time. I tried to do some research last fall but didn't have the time or patience to wade through the hundreds on the market. We had one where I worked. Unfortunately, I never paid attention to the brand, size, or wattage. I just used it. I'm sure the one at work wasn't a cheapie, but then again, I don't think I need an industrial grade machine for my shop
 
We have a few...

Only purchased one new, velvor from Chinese, aliexpress.

Was on sale with free shipping, then got a different generic one from thrift store, available on Amazon.

The velvor has 2 drivers and works well, but heater very slow.

the Amazon one is single driver, wider tank and heater works better.

Estimate 60 watts per driver.


Used ones can be found for cheap, but may be bad, can be repaired but that can be a challenge

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
In the watchmaker world, the Chinese imports have a decent enough reputation.

For carbs, go big enough that you can use an effective cleaning solution in a glass container large enough to hold the carb, but small enough fit in the chamber. Then, just used distilled water in the chamber and place the glass contain in the water. That's also standard watchmaker stuff, so that the parts can be used from a cleaning agent to a rinse agent without having to have more than one machine. But for watch parts, small jelly jars in a 2-liter cleaner is plenty, but that's about a fifth of what you'd need for even small carbs. The Rochester Quadrajet in my motorhome's Olds 455 engine would take a pretty darn big ultrasonic cleaner!

Drying is a bigger challenge, especially if using water-based or ammonia-based cleaning agents. I use a food dehydrator for that, the kind that has three layers of racks plus a lid. For carbs, I would cut the centers out of the top two layers to make a larger chamber. Dehydrators are just heating chambers with blowers--the heating is what dries the air before it is circulated.

My watchmaker ultrasonic cleaner is an import--imported from Switzerland :) and made by Elma. I bought it used and got a decent enough deal. But for less delicate parts and more aggressive cleaning, I'd have no reluctance to buy a cheapie from Amazon.

Rick "heating helps many of the cleaning solutions a LOT" Denney
 
I have a no name 15L unit which works quite well. Well enough to strip the AR coating off my glasses. Whoops! The coating just slid off! I hadn't expected that. Works well for other stuff too.


To keep busy between consulting work in the late 90’s I became a “Diamond Consultant” at Service Merchadise (long gone, general merchandiser who actually had very good jewelry). One evening, as part of the sales approach the Assistant Store Manager (who had a background in jewelry retail) offered to clean a customer’s ring (we kept a U-S cleaner heated up with fresh solution just for this purpose - “Here, let me put this in our cleaner while we find the right ring/bracelet/watch for that gift”). The ring was very bright gold, and the customer told us it had been made in Europe and was 22k (which is unusual for a man’s ring, which are usually 14k or lower). You guessed it: the plating came right off. The ring was shipped to the company jewelers in NYC, who confirmed it was plated and re-plated it. The customer was (reasonably) OK with things and we were all reminded to mark tags on items we took in for repair or sizing “man’s ring, yellow color, marked XXk.”
 
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That must have been an unwelcome surprise for the customer. He found out that he had been cheated when he bought the ring thinking it was 22k. Good thing that Service Merchandise at least returned the ring in reasonable condition. But too bad for the customer. 22k would be awfully soft, as gold has little strength.
 
That must have been an unwelcome surprise for the customer. He found out that he had been cheated when he bought the ring thinking it was 22k. Good thing that Service Merchandise at least returned the ring in reasonable condition. But too bad for the customer. 22k would be awfully soft, as gold has little strength.

We had our suspicions that the customer knew what it was, but didn’t argue (customer is always right)
 
I have a small Vevor one. It works well but my one beef is that it takes ~45 years to warm up the solution. To get around this problem I do two things:
1) I fill the tank with boiling water from an electric kettle
2) I put the parts in Ziploc bags with the cleaning solution. This saves wasting cleaning solution and is also less smelly.
 
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