Hello folks! I'm seeing more and more ultrasonic cleaners being sold in the market and prices have gone down quite a bit. Does anybody here use one? Please comment on the pros & cons as compared with tumblers.

 

Thanks in advance!

My advice is skip the ultrasonic as the cleaning solution is somewhat expensive.

 

My advice would be to go the route of stainless steel media. You can get a Thumblers tumbler model B from cabelas for about 180 dollars. It'll cost you another 50 dollars for the stainless steel media which has an infinite shelf life, you'll never have to replace it like you do with regular corncob media. Outside of that you need a jug of some form of dish detergent (I use dawn) and I highly advise you to get some lemi-shine they sell it at every walmart. You use between 1-2 tbsps of dawn and a 1/4 tbsp of lemishine so you can go a long way with a jug of each. Add water and your good to go.

 

The brass comes out looking like pure gold like it just came from the factory brand new.

 

Now sounds like a miracle right but there are a few downsides.

 

First is the case capacity. You can do about 250 .45 cases. Some people do more but if you follow the manufacturers instruction it says only 15lbs of stuff can go into the tumbler. So between the water and brass that's the capacity you can get. I have experimented with a little less water to get a few more cases and havn't had a problem.

 

Next is a plus and a minus. I have cleaning primer pockets so if you deprime all of your brass before you clean it, you'll now have sparkling clean primer pockets. So this adds an extra step to the cleaning process you normally wouldn't do with other methods but boy is it worth it.

 

The last downfall which in the beginning was a pain in the butt but after doing about 10 tumbles I got it down to a science is seperating the brass from the media and getting everything clean. My advice is to get a super fine drain catch so if you send any pieces of media into your sink or tub they will get caught there. What I do is take the case from my tumbler, dump the water out. Fill it about half way and take my hand an dig down to the bottom of the media and stir everything around. Dump water out, repeat process. Now I'm not getting any soap anymore so I can a spackle bucket which I cut in half to reduce the amount of water I have to use fill it to almost the top. I take my rockford arsenal seperator that mounts to a 5 gal spackle bucket and dump my media into there. Give it a few spins and now my media is on the bottom of the bucket and i have nice clean brass. Dump the water out, dump the media back into the tumbler, and put the brass on a towel next to my baseboard heating and in about 2 hours your ready to reload again.

 

If you need any pictures of videos etc either ask myself of glennp as I know we both use and love this system.

 

sorry for the long post.

M

great info! thanks Matt

+1 on the stainless steel. You dont HAVE to deprime first but if you dont deprime it will be harder to dry and you wont be able to visually see if it is dry. But your reward for depriming fist as matt said is perfectly clean pockets. Your biggest dis-advantage in my eyes is that you have to wait for it to dry (you can make a dryer though) but this disadvantage is shared between both stainless and ultrasonic.

 

Another positive with both is no lead dust in the air. But stainless does a much better job. And while 250 .45 cases is about the max for weight, I regularly throw in ~500 at a time lol. I kick the water amount down a hair to help balance it back a little bit but its way overweight. Still works and motor hasnt burned up

I have heard that with the sonic cleaners since the brass is left to air dry if you have to wash the brass or the cleaner can leave spots.

saw this in youtube while doing research on the topic :

 

just for kicks, I might try it tomorrow since I have a sander that I haven't used for ages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

saw this in youtube while doing research on the topic :

 

just for kicks, I might try it tomorrow since I have a sander that I haven't used for ages

 

ha, thats awesome. we always have odd shaped parts to clean at work, might have to try this as well...

ha, thats awesome. we always have odd shaped parts to clean at work, might have to try this as well...

 

I think ne needs a bigger container for the cylinder head..

 

only thing missing is the heat.