Ultrasonic Cleaners
 

For those of you with these machines what do you use for cleaning solutions?

Any non-water based solvent should work adequately.

I do two things. For some things I just use warm water and Dawn dish soap. For gunked up shotgun parts and receivers I put a peanut butter jar of lacquer thinner in the cleaner. It doesn't leave much room around the jar but allows a much greater volume of cleaner. I pour water around the jar of thinner up to the top of the cleaner tank and leave the jar lid just barely cracked while running the sonic cleaner. This works great for cleaning entire receivers. You don't have to take the hammers or other major internal parts out; just leave them in to soak for a while and keep running/soaking until the receiver is squeaky clean. Once clean I hose the receiver internals with Ballistol and let it drip dry. Haven't found a better way yet. The Ballistol sets up enough to where it doesn't seem to ever run off, at least not up here. Maybe in a desert area it would get warm enough. I've never had it seep out of seams or around the wood junction.

One place I worked we had a Ultrasonic cleaner that 4 foot on a side and held many gallons of methylene chloride for stripping epoxy resin off of tools.

I have one that I've used with acetone, mineral spirits, water/soap.

Ultrasonic cleaners
 

I have never used an ultra sonic cleaner but am interested. If you clean and entire receiver what happens to the patina?

Larry

Remaining case colors will stay but accumulated crud (patina) will go.

Dave
We just use dish soap or laundry soap and warm water.. Blow dry. and oil the parts. when done...
David

An ultrasonic cleaner won't do any more harm to the surface than the cleaning fluid itself would do.

Ultra sonic cleaning will remove rust. It is a remarkable sight to see the rust being blown off. David

I see
Hornady is making two moderately priced ultra sonic cleaners now . Neither is big enough for much more then the action and small parts .

I've been thinking I need one of these to clean cartridge cases instead of my old dusty Lyman tumbler .