My wife wants a new ultrasonic cleaner for her jewelry. I already have a brass tumbler/SS pins as well as a dry shaker w/ corn cobb. How does the ultrasonic cleaner work on brass? Is it worth cleaning any gun parts in one? I figure if I'm buying a cleaner, might as well get one big enough for my use too. Good brands?
Ultrasonic cleaner?
- Thread starter zimm17
- Start date
I love ultrasonic. I hate cleaning my guns so when I do, I chuck em in the ultra, especially handguns. I have a Hornady one that is ok not great. Looking to upgrade to a more commercial grade one as soon as I’m settled in the new house.
What's a good commercial brand?
If I chuck a glock in an ultrasonic, can you lube everything you need to without a full strip? For sure I wouldn't throw a revolver in there, the internals will rust. I'd love to do AR parts like the bolt parts that get carbon build up. Pistol barrels come to mind as well.
If I chuck a glock in an ultrasonic, can you lube everything you need to without a full strip? For sure I wouldn't throw a revolver in there, the internals will rust. I'd love to do AR parts like the bolt parts that get carbon build up. Pistol barrels come to mind as well.
I’ve never had an issue, but I don’t do it every time I clean either. And yeah I throw the BCG’s in there too. Makes easy work of it.
Something like this
Yikes, those are $4000-8000. I was thinking a little crest model at $700 was a stretch. The little Hornady lock'n load for $110 gets bad reviews, but it's only for some jewelry and a bolt carrier groups. I don't think I'll even mess with brass in it. The tumblers I have are fine.
Haha. I was showing an example of a commercial cleaner. I’m not dropping that kind of coin either but that’s the style I want. The Hornady ones are made in China so as usual, u get what you pay for. There are some decent value ones out there.
My ultrasonic works fairly well on brass. I use about 1/4 tsp of Lemishine and 1 TBS of wash and wax car wash. I run the brass for about an hour at 140 or so degrees. It comes out mostly clean, the primer pockets sometimes still have stains in them. I don't have a SS tumbler but my assumption is that the tumbler gets them a little cleaner.
I went with the Ultrasonic because I did not want to worry about making sure the pins weren't stuck in the cases and that I had seen reports that tumbling caused peening of case necks and neck tension issues.
I went with a 400 watt version off Amazon with 4 transducers and 10L capacity. It was some fly-by-night Chinese job, German and US made were much much more expensive. The nice features to look for are a wire mesh basket with small holes, a built in drain, and if you can get it a degassing mode.
I went with the Ultrasonic because I did not want to worry about making sure the pins weren't stuck in the cases and that I had seen reports that tumbling caused peening of case necks and neck tension issues.
I went with a 400 watt version off Amazon with 4 transducers and 10L capacity. It was some fly-by-night Chinese job, German and US made were much much more expensive. The nice features to look for are a wire mesh basket with small holes, a built in drain, and if you can get it a degassing mode.
Elma UltraSonic are German made for commercial use. i have a small one. 3/4 gallon. bought it for roughly $1K. You don't need a $1K Ultrasonic cleaner. The Hornady and RCBS ones should work fine.
My Elma UltraSonic has a built in heater, but no temp regulator, there's a separate heat dispersion pipe you can purchase. Also has a drain hole in the back. comes with a stainless basket. it can do 2 diff frequencies. 37 and 80khz. We use one in our lab at work, so i decided to get one since the one at works been through hell and it's seems to keep running.
Bought mine on Ebay. Model P30H.
My Elma UltraSonic has a built in heater, but no temp regulator, there's a separate heat dispersion pipe you can purchase. Also has a drain hole in the back. comes with a stainless basket. it can do 2 diff frequencies. 37 and 80khz. We use one in our lab at work, so i decided to get one since the one at works been through hell and it's seems to keep running.
Bought mine on Ebay. Model P30H.
Elma Elmasonic P30H 2.75 Liter Heated Digital Ultrasonic Cleaner And Basket, NEW | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Elma Elmasonic P30H 2.75 Liter Heated Digital Ultrasonic Cleaner And Basket, NEW at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
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A few notes of caution...
Be careful what solution you wind up using... I’ve found that quite a few will harm NiB coatings. Further, solutions designed to clean guns can often contain chemicals which may act on copper... If it attacks copper, it will attack brass.
Learned this the hard way.
If you do use ultrasonic, make sure to test the solution on some sacrificial cases first.
The “Bright & Shiny” mix on 6mmBR.com had worked well for me, not quite as well as stainless though, and a bit slower.
Be careful what solution you wind up using... I’ve found that quite a few will harm NiB coatings. Further, solutions designed to clean guns can often contain chemicals which may act on copper... If it attacks copper, it will attack brass.
Learned this the hard way.
If you do use ultrasonic, make sure to test the solution on some sacrificial cases first.
The “Bright & Shiny” mix on 6mmBR.com had worked well for me, not quite as well as stainless though, and a bit slower.
I would not bother with a small unit. You can still find the Hornady Hot Tub with a quick search. Get that instead if you want to go Hornady. It is what I currently have after having others of various sizes. Another option is the Lyman Professional. I have not used it or really looked into it, but it is big enough. Stay away from the generic 'commercial' stuff on Amazon (been down that road).
The problem with smaller units is they do not have enough transducers - they won't make enough ripples unless you only put a very small amount of stuff in them.
The Hot Tub only comes with 1 basket and 1 pan. I picked up 2 more pans. I got them on Amazon, but I recall I had to look for a while before finding them. The Hot Tub is not designed to take more than 1 (you use either the pan or the basket) because of the tabs for the parts hangers but I just notched out pans to make mine hold 3. By doing that I can put clean tap water in the unit and solution (cleaner and distilled water) in the pans. I can clean about 400 pieces of rifle brass with less than a gallon of mixed cleaning solution.
For cleaning solution, I have tried the home recipes. Nothing works like the Hornady Brass (not Gun) cleaner. Regardless of the solution used, you need to rise well (probably already know this from your pin tumbler). I put my brass in large pistol ammo trays (open bottom trays) after rinsing them and blow the water off with a compressor then stuff them in a brass dryer (I have the FA). Rather painless process.
No matter what you do, it won't work as well as a pin tumbler. If you are expecting the super shine, everything perfectly clean, you will be disappointed. Still, you are not cleaning up pins and it has other uses beyond brass. I pin tumble my semi-auto brass to make sure everything is gone, but I only do it outside in the summer months. From a manual labor perspective, an ultrasonic takes less effort. However, the cleaning itself does take more time. I dunk a few of my pistols and the AR's, but only when completely stripped.
If it were not for the amount of time I spend making sure my case mouths are as perfect as I can get them I would probably just stick to a media tumbler for my bolt gun brass. But as it stands today, I am using an ultrasonic.
The problem with smaller units is they do not have enough transducers - they won't make enough ripples unless you only put a very small amount of stuff in them.
The Hot Tub only comes with 1 basket and 1 pan. I picked up 2 more pans. I got them on Amazon, but I recall I had to look for a while before finding them. The Hot Tub is not designed to take more than 1 (you use either the pan or the basket) because of the tabs for the parts hangers but I just notched out pans to make mine hold 3. By doing that I can put clean tap water in the unit and solution (cleaner and distilled water) in the pans. I can clean about 400 pieces of rifle brass with less than a gallon of mixed cleaning solution.
For cleaning solution, I have tried the home recipes. Nothing works like the Hornady Brass (not Gun) cleaner. Regardless of the solution used, you need to rise well (probably already know this from your pin tumbler). I put my brass in large pistol ammo trays (open bottom trays) after rinsing them and blow the water off with a compressor then stuff them in a brass dryer (I have the FA). Rather painless process.
No matter what you do, it won't work as well as a pin tumbler. If you are expecting the super shine, everything perfectly clean, you will be disappointed. Still, you are not cleaning up pins and it has other uses beyond brass. I pin tumble my semi-auto brass to make sure everything is gone, but I only do it outside in the summer months. From a manual labor perspective, an ultrasonic takes less effort. However, the cleaning itself does take more time. I dunk a few of my pistols and the AR's, but only when completely stripped.
If it were not for the amount of time I spend making sure my case mouths are as perfect as I can get them I would probably just stick to a media tumbler for my bolt gun brass. But as it stands today, I am using an ultrasonic.
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