Anyone use one much? I was thinking of getting one for the usual dirty bits of an engine including tossing the lifters and such in there. Anyone happy with a particular model or have reasons against it?

Thanks.

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If your talking about ultra sonic cleaning machines ---- the motorcycle service shops and industry has been using them since early 80 s. About 12 years later the marine industry followed suit. A major player back then was OMEGA. I had one for cleaning carbs - outboard and I/O's. They did a good job but so did many of the hard chemicals back then that were not epa regulated.

Anyways around 2005 / 2006 I bought a CREST a bigger table top machine to clean small parts and carbs. The Crest is among one of the top players in the industry. Not cheap but they are work horses and made for commercial and heavy duty commercial use, even daily.

Also it best to use the recommended cleaners that the machine manu's recommend. Crest has very good chemicals for their machines. In the past 10 years many others have entered in the market offering many sizes and price ranges.

Check out the parts washers on Amazon or your local discount tool supplier like Tools Unlimited. Good long term invested for $50 - $100.

Harbor Freight use to have a nice all stainless steel sonic cleaner. I bought one for the plant I use to work at to clean the porcerax and sintered vents insert out of our molds. It worked great! I did use solvents as the solution instead of H2O soaps. I'm looking at one of the heated 2-3 liter stainless ones off of Ebay.

The one I bought was the one pictured in this post. Chicago Electric.
http://www.metalworkingfun.com/archi...read-3075.html

I think he is talking about ultra sonic cleaning machines ? And one big enough to fit semi sized parts in to ultra sonic cleaner portion. I have never seen a decent sized plus mid range quality for under 400 bucks.

had one of the older square versions from Harbor Freight to - complete junk and after a period in time in short order the heat control was broken --- it turned an outboard carb completely black, never used it again . Ruined the finished plus they are small and could not even fit a 4 bbl carb in them. This was HF stainless largest version 1.5 qt. made by Chicago Electric about 12 years ago. If I recall 150 bucks. They do not even sell that version anymore cause they had so many returns for years as they broke and or completely stopped working.

Agreed, never used our “parts washer” for engine internals but we do clean oil lines, and most engine external components. We also and rinse all with with fresh mineral spirts and then dump it into the parts washer. Our engine builder did all the sonic washing.

Sorry you had bad luck. Ours lasted 5yrs probably used it every other week for hours at a time, and cleaned many mold components. Turning a carb black is a solution issue not heat and ultrasonic waves.

I wasn’t really talking about any specific type of unit, but something I could stick a 4bbl carb in and have it come out better and cleaner than my ordinary solvent tank. I was hoping to find something useful in the ~$150 range to clean a carb, the loctite off of bolts, etc., but for most of what I’m seeing those start at 3-400 and on up from there.