School me on the finer points of buying the right Sharperteck ultra sonic cleane

[Jay Christopherson]

One piece of advice. Ultrasonic waves travel in a straight line. The hardest part of the case to clean is the primer pocket and the area inside the case right around the flash hole. I built some brass holders by sawing up old plastic ammo boxes to hold the brass upright so the hardest areas to clean are directly above the transducer. And one more thing, be sure to degas your solution before you put the brass in.

So, on your modified case holder, are you still doing about 30 - 40 at a time? And you are just dropping the modified ammo box into your solution with the brass set vertically in it? Do you still use the basket or do you let the modified box rest on the bottom of the tank?

 

[jlow]

Well, I just put in my order for a 6L. Bit the bullet and brought the bigger unit. It’s almost twice as deep and only $40 more so no sense being cheap. It was a bit more than I originally plan to spent but I am sure it will be worth it. They are close to me and so I should get it soon.

Thanks to all that has helped me with this process.

 

[TrapperT]

Jlow - Please let us know how it works out. I'm planning on getting a very good US machine either at the end of this year or early next. Would definitely like to here your experience with this one.

 

[jlow]

Not a problem, will be happy to report back on my adventures with the new US cleaner when I get it.

In the mean time, I am sure both Charlie and DennisH who both posted on this thread and gave me lots of good advice will be happy to help if you have questions.

 

[jlow]

Just a short note to report that my US cleaner showed up. Looks like good quality and heavy duty and I did a first small run today cleaning off some 223 LC09 brass that I had prep and had lube on it that had to be taken off. The machine comes with a heater which I did use to heat the solution up during the 5 min degassing. I used hot tap water/Lemishine/Dawn soap which is my standard recipe for SS media cleaner and the brass was clean and shiny after 5 minutes of cleaning and all the lube (Imperial) had come off. Not a real strong test as the brass was already pretty clean from being cleaned in a SS media cleaner.

I do like the stainless steel basket that came with the machine as it has some handy slots on the corners that one could use to pour out clean brass without having to upend the whole thing to get the brass out.

My next test will be to use some of their 1220-G Gun cleaner to scrub a few of my handguns – that should be interesting and more of a test as even though my guns tends to be pretty clean since I clean them after every outing, there are places where it is hard to get to.

 

[jlow]

Did some more test of the cleaner today – cleaned three handguns and three bolt groups.

So the bad news first. What I find is using the 1220-G gun cleaner from SharperTech heated to 40 degree C and diluted 1:3 as per instructions, the solution will not take the crusted carbon inside an AR-15 or AR-10 bolt carrier group (BCG). I ran the machine for up to 20 minutes and the stuff is still in there.

The good news is that unlike before when I ran a shotgun patch up there with some Hoppe’s Elite Gun Cleaner and the crusted stuff at the back refuse to come out, it all came out now when I ran the same patch and cleaner – so the US must have soften that material – so that is good news.

The handguns came out clean and what really pleased me is when I pour the cleaner back into a 2 gallon holding tank after I was all done, I found some material at the bottom of the tank. Reached in and found that it was sand. This must have come out of my handguns that I use in competition. It is impossible to keep sand out of your gun since you have to drop your mags during the match and even when you don’t use any dropped mag and clean them well before putting them back in, some sand always mange to get in there and into your trigger and action and you feel that slight grittiness. I have tried in the past to get rid of this stuff but even washing the gun in the sink and spraying them down real well with cleaner does not work. Evidently the US cleaner got it out. I put the slide and action facing down during the cleaning and all the sand must have vibrated loose and dropped through the wire basket to the bottom of the tank.

So overall I am really happy with the cleaner thus far.

 

[jlow]

Goodness gracious - great balls of fire! Have you guys been buying the 6L like crazy this week? The unit I brought this last week cost me $395 is now going for $655! Holy cow, talk about a price jump!

 

[Leaddog]

Goodness gracious - great balls of fire! Have you guys been buying the 6L like crazy this week? The unit I brought this last week cost me $395 is now going for $655! Holy cow, talk about a price jump!

Sharper Tek is still selling on their www.ultrasonicsdirect.com website for $395.

 

[jlow]

Thanks! Looks like they have two websites and two level of "discounts" ;D.

However, I have to say when I talked to Star last week, she did say that prices are going to go up next year. Soooo...

 

[Leaddog]

After using this unit for awhile, I've found that cleaning 20-25 pieces of brass for two 3 minute cycles works great. This works for brass that was shot once since previously cleaned. Older dirty brass needs more time.

 

[jlow]

Good to know! I've still got to test it on real dirty brass yet. Maybe next week since the next batch will be the stuff I am neck turning right now - it's pretty clean stuff.

 

[Leaddog]

I haven't tried the Citranox yet. I'm going to get two 600ml beakers and will report back. Boyd Allen has put out some of the most useful US cleaning info that I have read.

 

[Leaddog]

Boyd Allen has put out some of the most useful US cleaning info that I have read.

Could you post a link to that so I can become enlightened?

Dave, I'm sorry. I got usernames mixed up. It was your posts with the best US info. Thanks for the headsup.

 

[jlow]

Cleaned up my neck turned and annealed brass today and the SharperTec did reasonably well. These are brass that had already been cleaned once with the SS-media but had sat around while I annealed/FLR/neck turned them. The 223 brass came out super clean but the 308 still had some tarnish in the annealed neck area after 30 min cleaning with water/Lemishine/Dawn mixture at 40 C which surprised me.

Since I still had some of this heated solution left when I was done, I threw in 20 dirty 223 brass and ran it for 20 min. I have to say that I was disappointed with the results. The brass only came out slightly clean treated this way….

What are your experience with this method? Does the Citranox cleaner do significantly better?

 

[Leaddog]

Use less brass for shorter runtimes. When you run a large batch for a long time you aren't US cleaning anymore. See Dave's posts.

Use clean solution, too.

 

[jlow]

Thanks Charlie. I think this is a distinct disadvantage of the US cleaner. BTW, despite the fact that I clean cleaned a number of batches of brass with the solution, the cleaning solution was still quite clean this is because those batches were essentially cleaned and only need a touch up.

I was only cleaning 20 pieces of brass in a cleaner that could hold about 300 plus pieces and it was still cleaning very slowly. This would not have been a problem with the SS-media method. I guess it is just the weakness of the method. A bit disappointing but not the end of the world as all methods have weaknesses. I guess I will use the US cleaner only for the final cleaning step and also for gun cleaning. It is also possible that cleaning the brass with this method for the same 3 hours would work just as well but I think the noise associated with this method makes it hard.

 

[Leaddog]

I prefer the SS method for my .308, but for my 6 Dasher brass, I US clean. I don't want peened case mouths with my .0105 necks.