Ultrasonic cleaners. Worth the money and how to use them?

[clrems77]

Been using a tumbler with corn cob media with good results, but I'm curious as to how much better the ultrasonic cleaners are. Please enlighten me!

 

[Rda1911]

If shiny brass is what you want they are inferior to tumbler. If you want to place decapped brass in an ultrasonic cleaner and have your primer pockets, flash hole and case interior to be gut slick it's the way to go

 

[clrems77]

Wow.. That good huh? How long are the cleaning cycles and what detergent are people using?

 

[KelsonAK]

I don't like vibratory cleaners - I tend to make a mess with them and they are noisy. Ultrasonic works better for me. Next cleaner I get will be SS pins though.

To use - hot solution works better than cold. I like the hornady case cleaner product but there are a host o others that work as well or better. Lots of rinse water, dry brass after. I use the oven and a cookie sheet with a dish towel. 250f and kill the heat as I put the tray in. Try to get the surface water mostly towelled off, not a big deal.

 

[JByrd]

stainless tumbling media. save yourself the trouble and forget the rest.

 

[Kirkd]

Ultrasonic cleaners. Worth the money and how to use them?

I tumble my brass initially. Then lube, resize, and decap them. Then is use an ultrasonic cleaner. Tis what i do. Precision rifle ammo get ultrasonic cleaned only. Oh, i use the Hornady cleaner.

I may end up picking up a stainless steel media tumbler.

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[gvanhyning]

stainless tumbling media. save yourself the trouble and forget the rest.

^^^What he said^^^ I use Dawn and Lemi Shine but also tried the OxiClean dishwasher booster which works great.


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[Skyking]

Here you go. A few years worth of reading. http://www.snipershide.com/shooting...34722-stainless-steel-media-testimonials.html

 

[Tx_Flyboy]

I have both. A lyman 2500 & lyman 6000 Turbosonic & Hornady small Ultrasonic unit.

Do not buy a small ultrasonic unit. They are not worth the money. They do not come with heaters (hot water is essential for cleaning) and the time settings dont run long enough, so u constantly have to keep monitoring and starting them up over and over again.

The large ultrasonic units are where its at. They have heaters, longer timer settings (up to 30mins), more powerful inducers, etc.

As for cleaning, ultrasonic units cleans far better than a vibratory unit. Tumbling will get brass exterior shinier...much more shiny than you can with an ultrasonic unit. Primer pockets will still be dirty w a tumbler, and the interior is also not very clean.

Another advantage a big ultrasonic unit has is that it serves double duty as a firearm cleaner. Large pistols, AR uppers, AR bolts, and firearm components will all get cleaned better than you can scrub with manual means.

I have no experience with SS tumbling...it might well work better than ultrasonic cleaning, however, I would loose the advantage of being able to clean firearms and firearm components.

That said,

 

[clrems77]

Thank you for all the info guys! Will be looking into both options!

 

[clrems77]

Thank you for all the info guys! Will be looking into both options.

One last question. What are the benefits of the cleaner brass ? Is it worth the extra $300?

 

[918v]

Not worth it. Wet tumbling is superior. Tried it both ways. WT won.

 

[clrems77]

Not worth it. Wet tumbling is superior. Tried it both ways. WT won.

Whats not worth it? Stainless or ultrasonic?

 

[Rogue111]

I have a heated Lyman model. It has to run for ~20 minutes but comes out extremely clean, no complaints.

 

[Kirkd]

All 3 methods work. Some better than others and each has their own pros and cons. IMO


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[918v]

Whats not worth it? Stainless or ultrasonic?

US is not worth it.

 

[MrGreg]

I recently got an ultrasonic (the hornady 2L one). It does clean brass well, but only in very small batches. I can't put in more than 30 pieces of 223 and have them get clean in a 30 minute cycle. So I'm constantly swapping it out. If I had it to do over again, I'd just go stainless and be done with it.

 

[Monmouth]

I have both. A lyman 2500 & lyman 6000 Turbosonic & Hornady small Ultrasonic unit.

Do not buy a small ultrasonic unit. They are not worth the money. They do not come with heaters (hot water is essential for cleaning) and the time settings dont run long enough, so u constantly have to keep monitoring and starting them up over and over again.

The large ultrasonic units are where its at. They have heaters, longer timer settings (up to 30mins), more powerful inducers, etc.

As for cleaning, ultrasonic units cleans far better than a vibratory unit. Tumbling will get brass exterior shinier...much more shiny than you can with an ultrasonic unit. Primer pockets will still be dirty w a tumbler, and the interior is also not very clean.

Another advantage a big ultrasonic unit has is that it serves double duty as a firearm cleaner. Large pistols, AR uppers, AR bolts, and firearm components will all get cleaned better than you can scrub with manual means.

I have no experience with SS tumbling...it might well work better than ultrasonic cleaning, however, I would loose the advantage of being able to clean firearms and firearm components.

That said,

I would put my wet tumbled brass up against an ultrasonic any day. The interior is super clean and the exterior, well, brings smiles. Lastly, I achieve this without any "snow globing" aka brass dust floating through the water.

 

[Tx_Flyboy]

Monmouth,

If you read my post, i clearly indicated that i have no experience with SS tumbling.

While it may be equal to or superior to UT cleaning, it has a major disadvantage compared to UT; You can't/don't want to clean your firearm/firearm components in a SS tumbler.

That alone was huge for me...cleaning things, be it firearms, reloading components etc, and i abhor it.

Anything that saves me time is worth something.

 

[Monmouth]

Monmouth,

If you read my post, i clearly indicated that i have no experience with SS tumbling.

While it may be equal to or superior to UT cleaning, it has a major disadvantage compared to UT; You can't/don't want to clean your firearm/firearm components in a SS tumbler.

That alone was huge for me...cleaning things, be it firearms, reloading components etc, and i abhor it.

Anything that saves me time is worth something.

I clean my Sig pistol in my SS tumbler, loaded of course.

 

[Rda1911]

I use ultra sonic cleaner in the shop with 4oz's of simple green to each liter of water. I love how you can drop a pistol in it at 120 degrees an 20 minutes it's slick as brand new. We clean brass, guns, machine tools and engine parts in ours

 

[Charlie Papa]

I had a heated unit I bought from a dental supply, was big enough to hold a pistol slide or 100+ bottleneck cases, though I only did batches of 50. I don't think it worked right. It took an hour to get them only somewhat clean, and I tried everything from white vinegar to Hornady USC solution. Maybe I just got a lemon, but I don't know. Thing made the most awful high-pitched noise, too.

I use a SS tumbler now, but with either method, you're going to end up with wet brass and the case drying does suck. I thought I'd be slick and use annealing to dry the cases, only to discover that evaporation of the water was robbing energy needed to properly treat the brass and I was getting very inconsistent results because of the varying amounts of moisture. Everything is a damned trade-off. I haven't resorted to oven drying yet. Seen it done, and the brass comes out looking brown. I just wash my brass right after I shoot it and give it a couple of days to air-dry.

After using all three methods, my preference is definitely SS tumbling.

 

[copterdrvr]

I use the Lyman Turbo Sonic 2500 Ultrasonic Case Cleaner-got it from Midway for around 120 bucks and it works like a champ. It'll hold up to 900 9m/m cases at a time, is heated, cleans them in around 15 minutes. I wouldn't go back to the Thumblers Tumbler I used in the past for anything.

I deprime all of the cases before I put them in and both the inside of the cases and the primer pockets are perfectly clean when finished. It's pretty cool to be able to look inside of my 223 and 308 cases and actually see a SHINE!!! I've put 75 .308 cases in at a time with no problem at all. I also use the Lyman case cleaning solution as well.

Just got back into reloading recently and the ultra sonic case cleaner is the "best" new technology I've found since starting up again...

 

[fx77]

Tried every method
Dry tumbling in walnut shell media..very shiny, but dusty
then Wet tumbling in SS media..for me dealing with the little wet ss media parts, separation and drying, along with thime for the job was not to my satisfaction..cases were clean however too time consuming
Finally got an Elmasonic US tank, and I used diluted commercial cleaner for ultrasound cleaners, and set time and temp, came back 10-20 minutes later and had shiny brass..it was effortless and easy cleanup because the device has a drain and stopcock at its base and all I had to do was drain it into a 5 gal bucket and pour it out in the sink...

 

[Joe-n-TX]

Get the small cheapy one from harbor freight. I got mine on sale for like $20. Look for the additional coupon in various magazines. Now you have to manually hit the cycle button every 4 minutes but after 3 sessions (yes 12 minutes) you get pristine brass. The small us cleaner holds 20pcs of 308 perfectly. I only use it for my bolt guns but if you want to go anal it's the only way. Super easy. Super simple. There's a great article in 6mmbr.com if you're interested. Way less effort than lizard litter or stainless wet mess.

* speaking of bolt gun precision brass only. Not mass quantity pistol or carbine.

 

[clrems77]

Get the small cheapy one from harbor freight. I got mine on sale for like $20. Look for the additional coupon in various magazines. Now you have to manually hit the cycle button every 4 minutes but after 3 sessions (yes 12 minutes) you get pristine brass. The small us cleaner holds 20pcs of 308 perfectly. I only use it for my bolt guns but if you want to go anal it's the only way. Super easy. Super simple. There's a great article in 6mmbr.com if you're interested. Way less effort than lizard litter or stainless wet mess.

* speaking of bolt gun precision brass only. Not mass quantity pistol or carbine.

Thanks for the heads up with HF. It's a great way to actually try the US for next to nothing. If I don't like it, I toss it and move on without a real loss! Awesome!

 

[paindoc]

Got the Lyman professional ultrasound cleaning device. Awesome. I'm a cleaning fool. New toy. Brass, full AR and rifles up to 35.75 inches! I just cleaned 18 handguns in 20 minutes. Another 5 minutes to ultrasound lube them. Brass looks out of the box. I'm sold.


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