Thread: Ultra sonic cleaners

@sako75, LOL sure is....now how do I do that with a sako...."oow isnt it shiney" wont cut it....

:?

I've gone through all kinds of different methods to clean brass. After years of old fashioned vibratory cleaning, I thought I'd give ultrasonic cleaning a try back in 2007. At the time there weren't any ultrasonic cleaners available from the big reloading supply stores that I was aware of, so I approached it from a jewelry/mechanic angle. Initially I got a jewelry cleaner, which is pretty much an OEM version of what Hornady and RCBS now sell. It was easy to clean .223 and .308, but my .338 and .408 brass was in seriously small batches.

The process can be slow as you don't run them for hours like you do vibratory cleaners. I had to run mine about 20 minutes at a time, then give them a short break, wherein I'd often change the water. They can be really picky about the water to brass ratio and don't even think of using tap water. The results I got were pretty amazing, compared to what I was used to with vibratory cleaning, especially since the inside and primer pocket were spotless. Drying out the brass wasn't a big deal in the dry California air, but if I was doing it here I'd use an HVAC with some compressed air to flash the water off. Some guys clean them in the oven on low heat.

One of the downsides of this was that, as much as I liked the results, it was just too damned slow. Also, ultrasonic cleaners are annoyingly noisy. Unless you've heard one, I can't really describe it. Either way, I decided to invest in a larger, even more industrial cleaner with the intent of using it to clean AR parts and whatnot. But after 2 years of this I was still a bit frustrated. So when Stainless Steel Media first hit the streets, I thought I'd give it a try. All I can say is that it's got all the benefits of ultrasonics without most of the hassles. Think of it as vibratory cleaning but it gets clean inside the case and primer pockets. You still have to deal with drying them off, but it's easy to dump all of my range brass in the tumbler, let it go for a few hours without the nails on chalkboard sound of the ultrasonic, then sort and dry the brass.