I bought one back in September. I kept reading reviews and recommendations that said buy the biggest one you can afford as you'll likely wish you had a bigger model after using it for a bit. I ended up going with the 30 liter model on Amazon for around $300.00. It's way bigger than what you're looking at, but I know I'm glad I went this route. I do a lot of ATV work, and it allows me to clean multiple carburetors at a time. It's also big enough that I can fit a 4-barrel carb or other larger car parts in there.
As far as solutions go, I've tried Dawn dish soap, Sharpertek SC20, and Simple Green Aircraft and Precision Cleaner. The Dawn dish soap was ok, but not great. I wasn't impressed with the Sharpertek product. It wasn't any better than dish soap in my experience. The Simple Green Aircraft and Precision Cleaner has by far cleaned better than the other two products.
I looked on ebay and CL for 6-8 months and all that I found was totally worn out USA made equipment at high prices. I finally resolved that I was going to have to buy a new Chicom Ultrasonic if I was going to get one at all. I used high quality US made ultrasonic equipment at work so I know the difference. Someone on this forum in a previous Ultrasonic thread recommended Zokop so I ended up with a 410HT, 10L capacity. It has manual controls to avoid any digital control problems. It has served me well for 3 years.
Pay attention to the dimensions of the tank, a 4 bbl carb needs a different shaped tank than a sword, know what you will most likely be cleaning. I try to use a secondary container like
ISB cornbinder does, it saves a lot of solvent/cleaner. I keep an array of old glass jars (peanut butter or canning) handy, Ziploc bags as well. A Pyrex measuring cup works good if you keep the inside and outside levels pretty even. It is most important to use a basket keeping anything off the bottom of the tank. Don't drop a greasy part in the ultrasonic, pre-clean it first and use the ultrasonic as the final cleaner.
Thanks for all the responses fellas!
I searched "ultrasonic" and couldn't find any threads in the first two pages that were titled as such. I found that strange on GJ, so thank you for the the input. I'll try looking again.
The vendor in Canada is vevor.ca.
I have to look at tank sizes to try my best to predict what I'd need. I'd like to keep the cost under $200, which doesn't get me much capacity.
And Evaporust is great on its own, so it must be great in an ultrasonic tank. Great idea. Sounds like it would be a nice substitute for sand blasting if it works well.
The HF unit is a toy - Small tank, wimpy heater, non continuous operation, plastic tank seam, single transducer. (Probably OK for jewelry).
For a few more bucks you can get a Chinese "no name" unit with more power, stainless steel tank/basket, decent heater, drain valve and larger tank capacity. I believe all the no name units are OEM'd by Beijing Ultrasonics. I've taken one apart and they're decent. Try and get mechanical controls. For whatever reason they come with higher wattage heaters then the same units with digital controls. (Elevating the bath temp is the most important thing you can do to increase the units effectiveness.)
For top shelf units, go with Crest, Elma or L&R. I have 8 ultrasonic units and German Elma's are my favorite but not cheap. Unless you use them frequently they may not be worth the price.
Did you buy it on Ali or somewhere else? Can you list the make/model?
I bought it used from a member of a local audio/HT enthusiast group. It appears to be the same one that's on eBay all the time, it appears identical to item . This was supposed to be dedicated to cleaning old records, I also bought from the same guy a "Vinyl Stack" rotisserie and I have it set up with my stereo in the basement. I have probably cleaned maybe 100 LPs with it so far, 3 at a time at 10 minutes a go. A few really bad ones have been cleaned twice (ones where I actually had to manually remove dirt with a fingernail or toothbrush) I don't know how many hours were on it before I got it. I use distilled water in the bath with some isopropanol and a little splash of Triton X-100.
I've also used it for other things, when I'm getting ready to clean out the tank, I'll run my glasses through it, have cleaned showerheads too etc.
I hate buying no name stuff but for the price, I couldn't say no. If it dies I'll either buy another $100 one or else pay the $6-700 for a brand name unit, will make that decision then.
The difference between a cleaner like this and the cheap Chinese ones at Harbor freight or the one I bought from Amazon which many people recommended, is the time it takes to clean parts. I often have to put small carburetors in for 3-4 hours to get them clean, and the cycle time on the cleaner I have is 20 minutes. Even then, the carburetors sometimes work and sometimes do not. So if you’re really serious about cleaning, the better quality ones are worth it.
For quality https://www.crest-ultrasonics.com/
I got lucky and scored a Whaledent Biosonic U100 at a garage sale 10+ years ago for $20. Is pretty simple, no heat, but it's got the right frequencies to get stuff clean! I run small carburetors, speedometer parts, engine hardware etc for my Vespa scooters through it using Dawn, Simple Green, or Purple Power dilution. It's a workhorse for sure!
For finer things like electronics they make special fluids, we run Branson at work in our Crest ( https://www.globalindustrial.com/p/...system-digital-timer-heat-75-gal-45-khz-115v?), but for nuts and bolts etc, I get by fine with regular cleaners.
Thanks for all the responses fellas!
I searched "ultrasonic" and couldn't find any threads in the first two pages that were titled as such. I found that strange on GJ, so thank you for the the input. I'll try looking again.
The vendor in Canada is vevor.ca.
I have to look at tank sizes to try my best to predict what I'd need. I'd like to keep the cost under $200, which doesn't get me much capacity.
And Evaporust is great on its own, so it must be great in an ultrasonic tank. Great idea. Sounds like it would be a nice substitute for sand blasting if it works well.
Eljay,
I own a Vevor 6L but the one with 300w heater and I found the bigger heater very beneficial and worth it. It heats up quick and works well. I've been very happy with it. I would not go under 6L, you'll be limited in what you can put in it.
The 6L is not heavy and easy to store on a shelf. You can pick it up with fluid to take outside and drain into something if needed, it also has a drain spigot to drain into a bucket. I agree with others if you can find the analog version with knobs, they generally have the larger watt heater than the digital ones, you just have search a little harder to find but they exist. My digital one works fine though.
Evaporust is awesome in a ultrasonic cleaner but it not a degreaser so keep that in mind but you'll get the most performance out of the Evaporust when heated.
I've recently used Extreme Aviation Simple Green degreaser in it and have been very impressed with the results. It works well with non ferrous metal.
Pic of item covered in carbon grime and what felt like vaseline slime. It would have taken forever to clean by hand all those very thin slits and was actually pretty difficult to wipe off. Dropped it in for 15mins at 50C the way it looked in the before pic and after, I was very happy when it came out
macgee, that's a fine example of what it can do! Thank you.
I am between 6L and 10L at the moment.
I realize that to keep the heat in, it's best to close the lid, but I assume that if I want to clean an item that's a different shape than the tank, I could just submerge one half first and then flip it for the next cycle, correct? e.g. clean half a suspension coil spring and then the other half.
P.S.
Since I change my search here to search for "ultrasonic" in titles, I did see a lot of past threads. But thank you for everyone's replies and not shooting me down.