It can be simple if you think of it this way:

It amounts to price and bang for the buck.

Purple power is available in 2.5 gallon jugs at Walmart .

It a pretty good price and fairly inexpensive.

Since you have to dump it all out periodically, how much money do you want to flush down the toilet.

Purple power is strong even at high dilutions of 25%

Good point. Duragloss is $20 a gallon whereas something like purple power is $20 for 5 gallons

Mean Green $5.00 a gallon at Dollar General, my go to cleaner.

Has not hurt my ultrasonic which I have had for years.

1/3 mean green to 2/3 water mix.

Does the job for me.

Yeah, we're probably all splitting hairs here if we rinse well.

Putting wires in the cleaner might be an exception tho...long term might be an issue.

I just bought this one. It came in the mail today. I will have to experiment with some stuff and report back. You won’t beat the price on this one for the size of it.

I mentioned this a few pages ago but will bring it up again. I own a 6L unit and it takes about a half hour to heat up to 35c. Also, how much power are you using or do you care? Let us know how long it takes to get a 22 L unit up to Temp. I'm sure the bigger units have more heating elements. 1000 Watts it's quite a bit of power.

It may sound foolish to say, but make sure you fill it with hot tap water. The water also heats faster if the unit is running.

1000 watts is one of the reasons why I chose it. I saw other 22L units for the same or even cheaper prices but with half the wattage. I just have to find a good spot to set it up right now to test it. Most of my regular workspace is currently a giant paint booth.

This unit serves me very well.

Small parts like handfuls of screws go into mason jars or small plastic sandwich bags filled with cleaner. Then poured thru a strainer.

The 8 inducers are really nice.
It cleans from 4 directions.

I smear flitz on every thing that doesnt go in the tumbler and rub them down for a corrosion resistant coating after cleaning.

A lot of parts come out better than brand new ones.

Yeah just ordered one also. Got about six machines in the project queue. Will be nice to knock out multiple assys at once, instead of the small Harbor freight unit I've been using.

Ok, so after reading all of these posts, I am thinking of joining the "Club". Two questions:

1) Has anyone ever tried cleaning the lockbar receiver in an ultrasonic cleaner?
2) Would a 22L cleaner be big enough to do a lockbar receiver in one sitting, or would you have to turn it around?

Thank you.

yes it fits diagonally in mine.
I think the 22L is the perfect size, its done everything I have thrown at it.

Did it do a good job on the lockbar receiver?

What model 22L do you have?

Thanks.

it did a great job but, receivers, no matter how much you sand and polish them, never look right.

I just replace them now if I can get new ones.

I am new to UC cleaning. I put the ballgate in straight gasoline in a glass and the other part in the basket in a mix of orange degreaser, water and a few ounces of ammonia. I ran at 80 degrees C for 30 minutes. Obviously I have no clue.....heres what the parts look like after "cleaning". What am I doing wrong? Should the ball gate come out shining like new?

Thanks in advance for any comments,

Wal Ter

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Gasoline is an odd choice, but whatever.

Parts should come out clean, not necessarily new. If you lost plating due to corrosion or whatever, you'll still have splotches of unplated metal or pitting corrosion, they'll just be clean.

That gas though. That'll just get you an oily mess impregnated in your parts.

If you are looking for shiny, you probably need to tumble them after. UC Cleaning will only lean them not polish them

I have seen guys use gasoline in the ultrasonic for carburetor parts. I agree, probably not suitable for top of playfield parts.

Instead of mason jars, I’ve been using old little Tupperware containers with holes drilled in the bottom to do separate batches in the same run

Thanks guys, lots of lessons learned.

Well, I was excited to join a new Pinside club today BUT. . .

I purchased one very similar (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075FTFD3R/ref=emc_b_5_i), and my first remark was, no way this is 2L!

Used 2 parts water, 1 part Fabuloso (Target was out of Mean Green, Super Green, Purple Power etc), and 1 tbs of Dawn.

Ignoring the fact these are parking meter parts, not pinball, I tested it out, while it did seem to work fairly well (inc. sucking the paint off the placards), it'll be going back. I'd guess it's 1.5L, clearly marketed and labeled as 2L, or perhaps my Coke bottle is really 2.5L?

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Exactly.

I bought 6 of them in various sizes. They all worked ok.

Finally got the 22L one.

That and purple power or krud cutter at 25% dilution and a squirt or 2 of dawn. 55 degrees C.

On ultrasonic cleaners, its truly a matter of "Go big or go home".

They just have more power at 1000 watts or more.

Plus i can stuff pretty much everything in it, including coin doors and lockbar receivers.

So, get a big one.

That was my wife's thinking when she married me.

A couple of months ago I bought the Harbor Freight 2.5L model for a Pinbot shop job. I'm an instant fan. More importantly, so is my wife. While cleaning large items that don't fit into the tank I managed to kill the heater. So now I am essentially waiting for it to break so that I can get one that's more serious. But even the inky-dinky one is completely worth its money IMO as I know no other way to clean plastic posts (or coffee maker parts, or clockworks, or PCBs, etc.) anywhere nearly as nice as that and except for the heater (that I'll probably try to fix) my unit is going strong.

Interesting, I have an older unit that I have put large items in and run the heater until it shut off. If you had the tank full the heater should not have burnt out. But it is harbor Freight after all

Is this plastic ok to clean with my HF 2 liter cleaner? Simple green based with a touch of dawn.

IJ4 Cairo Swordsman Gate
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/880-5103-00

I wouldn't put anything painted in my ultrasonic.

Agreed. I did a test with a Demolition Man plastic and the paint started washing right off. Stick with simple soap and water or Novus 1/2 on painted plastics.

Unless you want to remove all the paint! Lol

Joined the club with the 2.5L harbor freight model (technically this one from amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/iSonic-P4820-WSB-Commercial-Ultrasonic-Stainless/dp/B00HLBKNLW/ )

Worth noting that the Harbor Freight one is on sale through 11/25 for 69.99 right now:
https://www.harborfreight.com/25-liter-ultrasonic-cleaner-63256.html

Anyhow, saw this simple green pro M metal cleaner / polisher on Home Depot site today and it got me interested.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Simple-Green-Pro-M-Professional-Grade-128-oz-Metal-Cleaner-and-Polish-Case-of-4-3510000418320/204322988

For now my plan is to use Simple Green Pro HD and some beakers to clean small stepper part, and then hand polish with flitz. But thought I’d mention this pro M in case anyone had used it.

So did my first cleaning yesterday. I was fairly happy with the result, but noticed that some items came out with more black tarnish spots.

I took some flitz polish paste (silver tube) and polished them up. It was a slow and painful process that I was hoping to avoid by buying the ultrasonic.

Ultimately I tried the dremel with a felt polishing wheel to help speed it up but even that was slow. I think these really do have a bunch of EM dust and tarnish worn into them over the 60 year life of the machine.

Any recommendations ? Longer time in the cleaner (I did 6 mins and reran the stuff that was really dirty)? Stronger concentration (20% simple green )? Different cleaner ? Or buck up and buy a tumbler too?

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4 days in a tumbler.

Ultrasonic is a cleaner, not a polisher.

Tumbling gets you the polished look without doing it yourself.

But it takes a few days.

I have the harbor freight small cleaner and use diluted duragloss - I get that black tarnish on metal parts all the time, in spots where the metal was even pretty clean before going in. Happens all the time on Gottlieb parts. It didn't happen when I first started, so I don't know if it's the particular degreaser, dilution %, or if something changed with the cleaner itself. It is to the point that I don't want to put everything in there any more, so that's frustrating.

Use the purple power at 25-30% and a couple squirts of Dawn.

I doesnt oxidize like some of the other degreasers.

However totally ruined plating cant be fixed in a sonic cleaner, but polishing can make them presentable.

Picked up some purple power at Autozone yesterday (tried dollar general but covid has that store in shambles). Gonna give it a try this weekend and compare results to simple green. Either way I think I’ll be joining the tumbler club soon as well.

don't you want to use distilled water? or is that mainly for PCB's?

Every local water chemistry is different

My water now is PH 7.8 and 300 tsd, so I just use it

The only thing I use distilled for is espresso

But when I lived in Florida, the water was acidic - like the rest of the state

I need just one more reason to buy an ultrasonic. So, can I clean the Swinging Target Motor from my Black Pyramid (without killing it)?

I'm concerned specifically about the motor/windings/etc, and also there appears to be some sort of fibrous packing around the ends of the main motor shaft that I assume serves a purpose and I'd hate to ruin it. The gears are all pretty oily and I figured I could flush that all out and replace with a light touch of some sort of grease, if even that is necessary.

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I would not put that in the ultrasonic.

When different metals are touching, bad things can happen when submerged .

Motors, relays, closed switches - skip the ultrasonic

Thanks vid. The gears aren't really too dirty anyway, I guess I can get by with cleaning the exterior the old fashioned way.

But I'm still buying an ultrasonic.

I switched from simple green to purple power. Using a 25% solution I find purple power to give much better results , particularly as it relates to leftover tarnishing after the cleaning. I’ve been putting all pieces of a stepper inside including the mounting plate, with the exception of the switches and coils.

Combined with a few (4-8) hours in evaporust for anything that has rusted and a few (8-10) hours in the tumbler for most of the smaller parts, the results have been excellent.

I bought the smaller harbor freight vibratory tumbler and I load it with course walnut media and a spoonful of mother’s mag.

For the mounting plate and larger parts that I worry about tumbling , I’ve been using flitz on a buffer pad that chucks into my drill. Results aren’t as nice as the tumbler but sufficient for my tastes.

Before

After

I had an old set of new plastics that there was no way the protective film was coming off, 5 min in the ultra and peeled off perfectly!! love this cleaner!!

Haha well there's a new use for the ultrasonic cleaner - I would have been too worried it'd start taking some of the artwork off

I put my mystery mirror from Funhouse in the ultrasonic when I first got it. It came out with an amazing mirror finish! You couldn't even see the text... because it was gone. I'd be careful with printed plastics in the ultrasonic. you may have gotten lucky.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GFQ6XKR

Just picked up this 10L unit from Amazon. Compared to my Harbor Freight 2.5L, it is quite an upgrade, and for $55... it's cheaper, too.

Loud though.

Let's see how it cleans. I have a feeling it's the same Chinesium that is in all the cheap ones. Which isn't a bad thing.

I see people putting coin doors in their cleaners and I am pretty jealous.

Learned the hard way that plastics don't go in the ultrasonic cleaner. Cooked the red off a set of Gorgar plastics once. Texted a buddy and he said "are you out of your mind???"

I trialed it with a set of crap plastics from a trashed playfield.

I’ve had success cleaning plastics in COLD solution in the ultrasonic. I’ve taken art off plastics in heated solution. In either case if plastics are touching each other/something it will wear/scratch the plastic.

I'm starting an Evel Knievel restore right now, I bought the HF ultrasonic a year or so ago and used it on a previous game, I was underwhelmed.