Information about using a ultrasonic cleaner

Wychild, Thanks for the link that sort of justifies my not having one.

Four hours with only a few brass???

The ultrasonic tank will pretty much strip flesh off of bone with that kind of treatment!

One needs to be careful with ultrasonic cleaning. I have an ultrasonic cleaner. I also follow directions... which apparently this poster never did.

You abuse anything, and you will get really poor, and maybe dangerous results!

wychild,
Thanks for sharing. Has anyone notice that the brass that was pictured was done in a pro grade ultrasonic cleaner and left in for several hours. To the best of my knowledge all cleaners of this type sold to the reloader for brass prep the max is around 480 seconds (8 minutes). As Ken stated you abuse it you reap the outcome. 

I am a dentist by trade and with the medical grade ultrasonic we replace ours every 2-3 years with newer equipment. Several of the old ones have followed me home for my gun room. After using a few ultrasonics to clean brass, now I only wet tumble and use dry media for cleaning my brass. Even with the industrial ultrasonic tanks the brass is not cleaned to my satisfaction for the amount of work that is required. The timers on our ultrasonics go up to 30 mins, for example at the office we place our instruments in the them for about 10-15 mins depending on the bio burden present. Even when used for the max of 30 mins on brass in the us tank, powder and carbon buildup are still present. While I have never run tests any longer than 30 mins, if used in normal conditions I can see no harmful effects on the brass. As with everything else in reloading you have to pay attention to the instructions. Follow the instructions with your ultrasonic and you will get the mediocre results they promise. Don't follow the instructions and you will likely damage your brass and or hurt yourself. Keep the ultrasonic on your bench, just use it for cleaning gun parts instead of brass

I have not noticed and and ill effects on my dental instruments over the thousands of cycles that they are processed in the ultra sonics. In the dental cassettes we have multiple materials all in one case (stainless steel case, aluminum clips, aluminum dappen dishes, plastics bite blocks, rubber and silicon bands, and spring steel tines), of which get cycled 3-4 times a day. For the amount of time a guy would leave gun parts etc in them over the life cycle of the part I could not imagine any issue.

I once had a keltec 380 that got left on a boat for a season or two, when I finally rediscovered it rust had coated the entire gun. I used the have pics of it somewhere, but it was that fluffy flakey rust and even the inside trigger mech was so full of rust it wouldn't dry fire. 3 total cycles of 30 minutes over the course of 3 days with the gun fully submerged in coca cola the rust was cleaned. Everything was severely pitted but the gun functioned well, I then used it to practice some blueing which turned out badly. The gun shot horrible but then again it was a keltec and it shot horrible before the rust and ultrasonic treatment. I left it under my center console of my old farm truck while eating breakfast at Hardee's one morning and some sob stole it, hence the reason I don't have long term result of it on a gun. I guess I got the last laugh because the insurance company paid for the window and the keltec handsomely allowing me to bring home another Springfield.