Good ultrasonic cleaning machine

[dgasmd]

Are you guys riding under a lake of mud that it requires all these over the top equipment and chemicals for a simple chain cleaning job?? Talk about overkill!

[ms6073]

Talk about overkill!

Well this is Weight Weenies after all.

[TobinHatesYou]

Are you guys riding under a lake of mud that it requires all these over the top equipment and chemicals for a simple chain cleaning job?? Talk about overkill!

I own the ultrasonic cleaner to strip factory grease from new chains.

[otnemem]

I bought a decent albeit smallish ultrasonic cleaner and imo it's not worth it. Not onky is it a pain to use and then clean, I get much better results with the method already referenced here: white spirits bath in a container, shake, sit, new and clean white spirits bath, denatured alcohol bath, dry, lube. In my case it may involve a wax bath depending on the chain/bike.
Takes three 1L containers and somewhere to hang dry your chains. Basically free.

To those who say that's a lot of work, I use three or more chains and then do this for all of them in a row. It's really not too bad and the results are day and night compared to the regular methods.

[alcatraz]

I have a really nice ultrasonic cleaner now (just upgraded) that actually cleans pretty well.

For anyone with access to a garage or workshop/room I still would recommend to use the canned chemical shake method. It's just so much faster.

I live in a tall building and I'm married so I can forget about storing smelly chemicals anywhere around here. Ultrasonic cleaner it is for me.

I had too high expectations with ultrasonic cleaners. They are good but if the stuff you're trying to clean is mucky/sticky it can't really do much about it. Chemicals work better for such things. I'm using industrial degreaser in powder form. Works ok but not anywhere near as good as gasoline and such solvents. (Disclaimer: Use gasoline with great care only, avoid if possible.)

[uraqt]

I plan on using the shaker method in a ultrasonic cleaner.. any body doing that? I saw a post or video of someone using the ultrasonic cleaner as water bath. The parts and cleaning fluid was in a zip lock bag and that was put in the water in the ultrasonic cleaner.

C

[TobinHatesYou]

I plan on using the shaker method in a ultrasonic cleaner.. any body doing that? I saw a post or video of someone using the ultrasonic cleaner as water bath. The parts and cleaning fluid was in a zip lock bag and that was put in the water in the ultrasonic cleaner.

C

That’s what I do. Even the degreaser in my ziploc bag is cut down to 5:1 water:Zep Citrus. Makes “cleaning” the ultrasonic cleaner a non-issue because all the grease stays inside the bag.

[pdlpsher1]

I own the ultrasonic cleaner to strip factory grease from new chains.

The best way I’ve found to clean off factory grease is to use paint thinner (same as mineral spirits I think) in a clean paint can. I let it soak for a few days. The chain comes out completely stripped of the sticky factory lube. I’ve tried it using an ultrasonic cleaner and citrus degreaser but it didn’t work.

I do use an ultrasonic cleaner to clean a dirty chain. It works reasonably well. But I’m considering of buying a second paint can and use mineral spirits to clean dirty chains.


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[pdlpsher1]

Here’s what happened to my anodized chainring when left in a concentrated citrus degreaser heater to 50C in an ultrasonic cleaner for too long. Now I only clean chains in the citrus degreaser. And oh I’m using the purple Simple Green ProHD degreaser that’s supposedly safe for aluminum.






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[TobinHatesYou]

I own the ultrasonic cleaner to strip factory grease from new chains.

The best way I’ve found to clean off factory grease is to use paint thinner (same as mineral spirits I think) in a clean paint can. I let it soak for a few days. The chain comes out completely stripped of the sticky factory lube. I’ve tried it using an ultrasonic cleaner and citrus degreaser but it didn’t work.

I do use an ultrasonic cleaner to clean a dirty chain. It works reasonably well. But I’m considering of buying a second paint can and use mineral spirits to clean dirty chains.

I used to use an old bidon filled with OMS, but it's flammable and worse environmentally than citrus degreaser. I don't find it cleans any better than Zep Citrus, which as I mentioned I already dilute 5:1. I pour the contents of the Ziploc bag out maybe 2x and on the third run, the solution stops ending up cloudy.

Citrus degreaser also isn't an acid, so it's not actually "eating" your chainring. Something else is going on...probably the ultrasonic action itself.

[Frisco]

Low frequency ultrasonic with cold water is known to pit metals due to the mechanism of bubble cavitation. Many of the cheap consumer units have 40kHz transducers, which would have the worst pitting risk. Pitting damage reduces by using solvent instead of water, heating the bath, and increasing the frequency beyond 120kHz. Some of the damage might not be visible unless you use a microscope, but the mechanism is well documented. For fragile parts that require ultra clean surfaces, many applications use 200kHz to over 1MHz but just the frequency generators are very expensive.
Unfortunately companies selling cheap units likely don’t communicate damage risk like this in their manuals.

[pdlpsher1]

Thanks. At this point I'm only using the cleaner to clean a dirty chain. Would there be any issues of pitting on the steel chain? It sounds like perhaps the cleaner is really not ideal to use on bike components.

[RedbullFiXX]

Speed Wax, soooo much easier on maintenance

[TobinHatesYou]

Speed Wax, soooo much easier on maintenance

I used MSW, but switched to plain paraffin. The MoS2 and PTFE save you on the order of <.1W. The MoS2 also makes the wax flakes very dark and noticeable on a white bike like mine.

[RedbullFiXX]

Speed Wax, soooo much easier on maintenance

I used MSW, but switched to plain paraffin. The MoS2 and PTFE save you on the order of <.1W. The MoS2 also makes the wax flakes very dark and noticeable on a white bike like mine.

Makes sense, seen all sorts of paraffin blends working well
Best part is no beach sand or dirt getting into chain or stuck on sprockets
Not so good in the rain, nothing is pefect