Ultrasonic Cleaner

[Chestnut]

I was going to stick this in one of the off-topic threads but figured it might be appreciated to make it's own thread for search reasons.

I recently bought an inexpensive ultra sonic cleaner off amazon to clean rifle brass before reloading. I also bought it to clean a noise reduction barrel attachment that I expect to take delivery of sometime in July. With the cleaner at home i started thinking about items that I could use it for to both save time and maybe money?

The tap water that is delivered to our house is great quality in all aspects except hardness. There is a lot of limestone in our region and it results in awful calcium carbonate (aka limestone or tums) deposits on our plumbing fixtures. In the past I've soaked these parts in full strength vinegar for days to try and remove the deposits. My recent brain wave was to use the ultrasonic cleaner to remove the deposits with an acidic cleaning solution. Our shower head has had buildup so bad there was no way to clean it and I've replaced ours twice in the last 7 years.

The above image is before cleaning. I used a solution of food grade citric acid and water. I used warm water to dissolve the citric acid and also maybe be more effective on the limescale. For those of you that aren't chemists, Calicum carbonate has a pH greater than 7 both the substance in the water and the scale that is formed reacts with acid. The troube is when the scale is thick it's still HARD to remove. So submerged the faucet head in the weak acid and ran the ultrasonic cleaner for 10 min.

Still some deposits left but this is cleaner than I've ever gotten after soaking for days. Immediately after this I did the same operation with our shower head and that got cleaned to look brand new. I was unable to determine how much a new faucet end was but a new shower head is currently $90..... so the ultrasonic cleaner is already paid for.

 

[gee-dub]

A place I worked long ago had so many airless paint sprayers that we used to rent some of them out long-term to other companies. Not everyone takes as good of care of things as we might expect. We used an ultrasonic cleaner as a first step in cleaning out the guns and pump mechanisms. Very effective.

[tperson]

I picked one up about 18 months ago from the local harbor freight to (primarily) clean small engine carbs. All I run in mine is water and a little dawn platinum dish soap. Results are nothing short of amazing. 

 

Chestnut: I ran some 50BMG brass through mine this winter and wasn't impressed with the results. They were mostly clean, but almost dull. I threw them back in my tumbler and they cleaned right up.