Ultrasonic gun cleaning

[Labrat198]

Picked up a ultrasonic for cleaning my deprimed brass. Heard they can work well for cleaning up detail stripped internals as well as barrels, but haven't read what people actually use in the bath. Same solution as the brass? Solvent of some sort? Specialty parts cleaner solution?

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[my_old_glock]

For general cleaning use hot water a Dawn liquid dish soap. Nothing else.

The main problem with the ultrasonic cleaner is it can "burn" parts of the metal if left in/on to long. The "burning" is actually cavitation damage. You can clean your non-collector guns, but don't put anything of high value inside an ultrasonic cleaner. If you have some 100-year-old Colt revolvers with perfect bluing, leave them out of the ultrasonic cleaner.

Leaving a gun in the ultrasonic cleaner for 1 or 2 minutes isn't a problem, but you may still see some cavitation scars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation


Cavitation is a significant cause of wear in some engineering contexts. Collapsing voids that implode near to a metal surface cause cyclic stress through repeated implosion. This results in surface fatigue of the metal causing a type of wear also called "cavitation". The most common examples of this kind of wear are to pump impellers, and bends where a sudden change in the direction of liquid occurs. Cavitation is usually divided into two classes of behavior: inertial (or transient) cavitation and non-inertial cavitation.

[Labrat198]

Good info on the cavitation. Wasn't sure if water was a good choice, but then again as long as I dry everything off it can't be any worse than when it's raining or snowing. Mainly putting pins, springs and other small parts. Sounds like keeping the slide, barrel and frame out would be best and they are easy enough to wipe down.

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