Ultrasonic cleaner

C

Casey

New member
I have seen several posts on the internet about people using ultrasonic cleaners to clean handguns. Most of these seem to be folks using old dental/medical models.

Does anyone sell a unit (for a reasonable price) that is designed for home use and is big enough to handle a disasembled 1911?

Thanks.

Casey
 
I have a unit that is being utilized as we speak. It's awesome and mine is big enough for two 1911's. I highly recommend that you do not use blued steel with an ultrasonic cleaner. I don't know if my cleaner is super strength or what but it ate away the bluing on my recoil plug.

It takes 5 minutes to completely clean a pistol. This thing is great for revolvers! It's a shame mine isn't big enough to use with my Ruger Super Redhawk (7.5" barrel).

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Son
1911 Addiction
"The tree of liberty will grow only when watered by the blood of tyrants."
 
Here, I just took this picture of mine cleaning a S&W Model 60. Lower left hand corner is my Outer's Foul Out cleaning some lead out of my 1911 barrel. Best of both worlds!

ultrasonic.jpg
 
Duh, I just recognized the Simple Green bottle in the photo, sorry. Do you dillute it at all? or use it full strength.
 
Yes it's Simple Green. I don't dilute it at all. I keep using it until it turns murky black. At that point, I ditch the solution and add new Simple Green.

I'm not concerned about the muck getting on the gun because it rinses right off with warm water after it's "cleaned". Be sure to either dry with a hair dryer or bake it in the oven after rinse. The oven works the best. Then lube the gun.

If you want to really get hi-tech, get a lubricant of some sort. Dump it in the cleaner and clean away. After you're done, the gun's already lubed. However, that can get expensive because you'll need a lot of lube.

Despite popular belief, you don't even need any special solution to clean your guns. De-ionized water works just as well. It's the high frequency that cleans the gun. The solution helps but not needed.

My unit was free :) They run anywhere from $30 from a dentist's office to $350 for a small unit up to $700 from Brownells.

With the Outer's Foul Out and the ultrasonic cleaner, cleaning is a BREEZE and FAST.
 
I asked this before and never really received a satisfactory answer, so maybe ArmySon can this time.

If you use the tank for lubricating the pistol (by dipping it in some sort of a lube after cleaning OR as you suggest, simply use a lube as a cleaning solution), how do you remove excess lubrication in sensitive areas such as the chamber?

Before using MPro-7 to clean and selectively lubricating afterwards, I, in the past, used a CLP (G96 or Break Free) quite liberally to clean and lubricate my guns. Then I found out that some of these solutions would congeal and stay in the chamber or other internal areas of the gun and would leak out slowly or get on the ammunition and/or magazines. No matter how much I wiped away, they would keep coming out for days (and sometimes weeks). I stopped "spraying" or "drenching" guns with CLPs.

If cleaning and lubricating is a cinch with an ultrasonic cleaner, I may buy one, but not if I have to do a lot of things manually.

Skorzeny

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For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. Sun Tzu

[This message has been edited by Skorzeny (edited September 19, 2000).]
 
That's simple to solve Skorzeny. After cleaning and/or lubing, bake it in the oven like normal. That dries 90% of the lube yet is good enough to keep a pistol running smoothly. I found that my 1911's run best this way instead of dripping wet with lube.

I like using Militec 1 because it bonds to the metal at high temperatures.
 
Bake it, eh?

Hmmm. I think my wife may object to putting firearms soaked in lubrication into "her" oven.

Is there any other way?

Skorzeny

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For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. Sun Tzu
 
The ultrasonic cleaners are very exspensive but they are well worth it. I purchased my Crest 575HT from a police supply dealer for $1100. http://www.policeproductscorp.com/ This unit is big enough for 2 handguns and came with all the accesories, cleaning agent and lube. I justify the cost of the unit with the amount of time I save. Cleaning 2 handguns the old way would take me anywhere from 1 to 1.5 hours. With the ultrasonic unit it takes me less than 20 minutes to clean 2 guns and they come out clean as new. It really only takes about 10 minutes of your time as you can do other things while the guns are being cleaned/lubed. My wife also uses it to clean her jewelery.

My cleaning goes like this:
1. takedown gun(s)
2. put in ultrasonic cleaner for 10 minutes
3. rinse gun(s) with tap water
4. ultrasonic lube gun(s) for 5 minutes in lube pan that fits on top of ultrasonic cleaner.
5. blow gun off with air compressor
6. put gun back together

No more sitting at the kitchen table for hours cleaning. :-)

Also you get what you pay for with ultrasonic cleaners. I wouldn't recommend the cheap units, they don't work as well because of the cheaper electronics.
 
One solution to the problem of getting the water out would be to dip the parts/assembly in a tank of denatured alcohol. The alcohol will absorb water and rapidly evaporate. However, it will also absorb water from the air, so you need to keep alcohol tightly capped, and I don't know how often you can use it before it becomes ineffective. The only problem here is that, depending where you buy it, denatured alcohol can be pretty expensive.

On lubing afterwards, Beretta did/does advise dipping in a tank of mineral spirits or kero, if I recall correctly. I actually had to do this once in the field with a SIG that got filled with very fine sand, but it's not my idea of the best way to lube a pistol. I don't think either mineral spirits or kero will displace water from small crevices, so I don't think you can solve the problem that way.
 
affordable ultrasonic cleaner

Most of the good brands (L&R, Crest, etc.) offer the same ultrasonic cleaning power on all models., What differs is size, with larger volume requiring more electronics, and accessories such
as a drain on the tank, timer, water warmer, etc. I opted for small and cheap. I measured the longest part I wanted to clean, and found the smallest cleaner that would hold that part. I didn't get anything fancy like a heater, timer, or drain plug. I shopped the internet and was able to find a good deal on one that would hold the barrel of my 1911 for about $250. That works for me, because as long as I'm not applying elbow grease, I don't mind if I have to leave a part in longer than in a bigger model, or do the gun in two or three batches instead of one. I suspect that if you do a lot of shooting, with mutiple guns, a larger machine would be a better investment. But I wanted to try it out without going broke.

Canuck1911
 
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