Ultrasonic Cleaner

[gliebegott]

So I am thinking about upgrading to an ultrasonic cleaner. The Lyman to be exact.

I know that I may still have to put them in the tumbler to make them shiny but I figure the ultrasonic will really get the grime off/out of them.

I was wondering if anyone had some tricks on how to dry them once done.

[Whiterabbit]

cookie shooet, paper towl, make sure none are touching, then into the oven at the lowest possible setting for 45 to an hour. sometimes 2 hours

once the outside is dry, out they come, and I don't touch them. The outside is good, but the inside is wet. I can bake for 4 hours nad the inside is wet, waste of energy. I let them sit overnight, then the inside is good too.

Probbaly have water spots inside, but I don't care. Outside is good.


----------------

NOTE: I loaded when the outside was bone, bone dry but the inside must have been wet, because none of the rounds fired. That's a mistake made only once. Now I wait overnight and inspect he inside of every case when cleaning using a wet method.

[Silver-Silver]

I used to clean with Ultrasonic, but I moved to Stainless Pins. Either way you have a drying cycle to deal with.

I spread the brass out on a towel and blow a fan over the Brass. Rotate the brass after an hour, and let dry for a couple hours to over night. It is cheaper to use a fan than an oven, and my brass is mostly dry after an hour. The overnight is just to make sure everything is perfect. I do lots of brass at a time, and the only advice I can give you is deprime first before cleaning, and use a different towel after you rotate the brass.

Link to YouTube explanation

This isn't mine, but someone else linked to it. He explains a drying process similar to what I use.
-Wildcat

[birdadly]

I bought one to upgrade from the vibrating tumbler... tried it 3 times and brought it back to the store. I thought it'd be awesome, but just wasn't impressed.

The Stainless stuff looks promising though, but more expensive out of the gate. If I were to try upgrading again, I'd look more into the Stainless stuff, especially if you're spending near $100 already. Just my two cents, if you haven't researched the Stainless stuff, maybe check it out before you make a final decision. -Brad

[cbunt1]

Well, Here's how *I* do it, YMMV.

And for what it's worth, I do mostly pistols, so I'm not overly concerned with perfect primer pockets (say *that* three times, fast).

I run the US for 2-3 cycles depending on how dirty the brass is. I use a homemade concentrate of citric acid and soap (actually, I'm dabbling with the idea of selling this stuff too).

When I pull the cases out of the US, I use my brass sorters to shake most of the water/Citric acid cleaner off, and then put them in the tumbler for 30-45 minutes.

The tumble cycle dries them out sufficiently, and I don't get corroded primer pockets from the acid process as long as I shake/tumble them.

And take a look at the Harbor Freight unit...it's the same one as the Lyman, with a different basket, and at about 1/3 the price...especially if you find one of the numerous 20% off coupons for HF.

I now process brass in about 1/5 the time I used to, and it looks new outside, and mostly new inside. I find that decapping before the US process cleans the brass both inside and outside, as well as the pockets, but I don't usually take the time to decap my pistol stuff...I run 1000s of .45 at a batch, and just don't want to take the time.

Rifle, of course, is another story...I decap rifle before I US clean it, and the shake/tumble process gets it dry, and shiny.

Media is 14/20 corncob treated with 50/50 Nu-Finish & mineral spirits (or ed's red, or straight, or whatever suits me that day!)

[Silver-Silver]

Interesting Cbunt1 I never thought of using ed's red as a brass polish additive. It seems to work for everything else though.

I have an ultrasonic cleaner, not one sold at HF but I do recomend a large capacity cleaner. I use mine to do a thourough cleaning of handguns every once in a while. It is nice being able to drop 3 full size handguns into a cleaner and watch the gritty crud ooze out of nooks and crannies. If you are thinking about getting one, I had mine custom built somewhere near Detroit, Michigan. I had them upgrade the heating element and add a second transducer for a more even cleaning.

The only reason I recomend depriming all brass before cleaning is for 2 reasons, it gets the primer pockets very clean, and most importantly, I had issues with primers seizing or corroding in place and the depriming pin would punch out the center and leave the sides of the primer stuck in the brass. Your results may vary. Others seem to have had good luck with doing it the faster way of depriming after cleaning.

-Wildcat

[kenjuudo]

A hair dryer will heat up and dry cases in a few minutes, just dump them in something so you can shake them around. Just went through a couple hundred 30-06 cases, didn't take five minutes with the dryer.

jim

[cbunt1]

Interesting Cbunt1 I never thought of using ed's red as a brass polish additive. It seems to work for everything else though.

-Wildcat

I originally did it because I wanted to pour a bit of mineral spirit into a batch of very depleted media...but alas, I was out of straight MS....so I poured in a splash of ER, which was handy (and 1/4 MS to boot!). It worked so well I just kept it up.

Another happy accident brought to you by "I'm out of what I need, so I'll try a dash of what I have and see what happens"

[rsrocket1]

I bought one of these Ultrasonic Cleaners at Harbor Freight for about $60 on sale with a coupon when I started into reloading and did a lot of experimentation with it. I believe the 160 Watt rating is for a 60 Watt transducer and a 100 Watt tank heater.

For pure ultrasonic cleaning using nothing but water and a drop of Dawn dishwashing detergent, the cleaner lost effectiveness with more than 18 45ACP cases or 12 .308 cases standing in a glass beaker suspended above the transducer. I needed four-8 minute cycles to get them clean. Baby sitting the cleaner and having to restart it every 8 minutes is also annoying. The cleaned cases looked very nice with insides and primer pockets spotless. Any more cases and the time took exponentially longer. It was fun to watch the crud "boil away" off the surface of the cases, but the noise is very annoying. I made a box with foam baffles to cut the noise down.

Undoubtedly, the Hornady, Lyman and other US cleaners rely heavily on the proper cleaning solution to clean dozens or hundreds of cases at a time because brass is a very good absorber of ultrasonic energy (that's why you get that micro-cavitation). When doing that, the US cleaner is not much more than a wet vibratory cleaner. If you go that way, look into getting Lemi Shine dishwashing cleaner. Most Walmarts carry it. It contains citric acid which cleans and shines the brass but does not eat away at the zinc the way vinegar does. I am also pretty sure it costs less than the other stuff.

I now use the HF vibratory tumbler and crushed walnut. Pour the stuff in, set an appliance timer to 3 hours, turn it on and I'm done.

If I really wanted a truly strong ultrasonic cleaner, I would look into getting a used industrial, medical or dental cleaner, but they are probably a couple hundred dollars used (unless you can score one for free).

The US cleaner is very good for cleaning hard to reach parts such as AR-15 bolt carrier groups and 1911 frames and this size works fine for those purposes.
As for drying, spread them out on a paper towel overnight. Rinse them in distilled water to reduce the chance of spotting too.