Ultrasonic Cleaning Agent - What Do You Use?

[Don Ro]

Picked up a cleaner yesterday and the reviews on Harbor Freight's cleaning agent are not that great...some say that they use Simple Green, others say hot water and dish soap, etc.
I'm cleaning a couple of hand guns...what do y'all use?
TIA.
.

[JJ 911SC]

Dawn

[mgatepi]

A drop or two of Damn

[Don Ro]

Thanks gents.
2.5 liter bucket, only a drop or two of Dawn? That's not much.
Ought it be hot water?
And after rinsing, put it back in the unit w/clean water to rinse even more?
.

[gtilove]

Depends on what you are cleaning. I used have one to do heavy degreasing/cleaning, and have had great success with Pine Sol. It is cheap, and worked great. The machine heats it IIRC...

[JJ 911SC]

from: Ultrasonic Cleaning question - what "solution" do they/you use?


Ultrasonic cleaning works best when the surface tension of the water is reduced. 2 common methods are (1) detergent and(2) heat to reduce the surface tension. I bought 4 ultrasonics for Corning when I was their process engineer. They work by creating millions of microscopic air bubbles that explode in the water to scrub. A common way of testing the power of the action is to leave a sheet of aluminum foil in the bath for 30 seconds and seeing how much the foil is worn. Test your soaps solutions or heat this way to see which works best. Don't put your hands in the ultrasonic because it ruptures your cells. A few drops of detergent per gallon of water should work fine. There are different ultrasonic wave lengths used by different manufacturers. The really nice ones use a sweeping wave length that incorporates a few different wavelengths throughout the cleaning cycle. You could make your own ultrasonic cleaner by just buying the transducers and power supply and attaching them to the bottom of a stainless steel pan. You can file this comment under " More than anyone needs to know about ultrasonic cleaning ".

[wswartzwel]

I use a 50/50 mixture of pinesol and simple green.... Fill my machine 25% with that and 75% water. works great at 140 degrees for cleaning gunky carburetors.

[MBAtarga]

Be careful when cleaning aluminum and alloys - some of the cleaners that you would consider mild will eat the metals.

[Don Ro]

Originally Posted by MBAtarga

Be careful when cleaning aluminum and alloys - some of the cleaners that you would consider mild will eat the metals.

The Harbor Freight agent (powder) warns about this.
.
Thanks for the info, all.

[red-beard]

I use the Home Depot orange cleaner full strength. It is degreasing. I tried the "purple" stuff and left it in the cleaner for several months. Everything except stainless parts started rusting in the general area.

[JJ 911SC]

Originally Posted by MBAtarga

Be careful when cleaning aluminum and alloys - some of the cleaners that you would consider mild will eat the metals.

From the same link @ post 6,

A common way of testing the power of the action is to leave a sheet of aluminum foil in the bath for 30 seconds and seeing how much the foil is worn. Test your soaps solutions or heat this way to see which works best. Don't put your hands in the ultrasonic because it ruptures your cells.

[LWJ]

Mineral spirits. Hope it doesn't find a spark.

[legion]

Guns? I use a gun cleaning solution from Hornady or RCBS. DO NOT USE A BRASS CLEANER. It will take the finish off.

For brass, I use 50/50 vinegar/water with a drop of Dawn, then a brass cleaner.

[Don Ro]

This particular gun is the AMT AutoMag II (.22 Mag) - stainless steel.
Thanks again, gents.