9GUY9
Well-known member
There were a few people asking how well the HF $80 Ultrasonic cleaner worked, and I was sitting around with nothing to do. SO I decided to clean a few sockets I had brought home with mine. I grabbed a beer, my camera, and the bag of old sockets I brought home from work and went to the garage.
Heres the collection of old USA made (and several bench top) sockets I found at work while digging through the extra socket box.
They were pretty old meaning the grease packed into them has been there for some time.
Sockets on the basket in the cleaner.
I filled the cleaner about 1/4 with a purple cleaner. I don't know the brand, but its pretty strong stuff. Filled the rest of the way with tap water.
I used a old hand cleaner container to get the water. THe cloudy white stuff is dried hand cleaner. I didn't take it out because I figured it would be a little extra cleaning power
The Chicago Ultrasonic cleaner has run time options of 90 sec, 180 sec, 280 sec, 380 sec, and 480 sec. It also has a heat function. I really wish it had longer time settings. I always use the 480 sec time with heat.
Heres what it looked like after 2 8 min cycles.
A little vid I took of it working. The mic on my camera was not liking the ultrasonic sounds.
After about an hour and several cycles the temp was 111.8
To be fair I started with every thing at around 40 degrees. This beer is room temp
After about 5 or 6 8 min cycles and a little over an hour in the cleaner I removed the sockets and rinsed them with tap water. The results
You can see almost all the dirt and grease was removed. The dark areas are mostly rust.
I searched my garage and bike room high and low looking for more dirty/greasy stuff and couldn't come up with much. My OCD has me cleaning my tools after each use. So heres the dirtiest stuff I could come up with. A CMan Pro screw driver with a couple years worth of oil film on the rubber handle, a couple old bolts, and a pulley from a old bike dreailuer. The pulley was pretty caked with grease, but it is a wax based chain lube I use.
I used the same solution as the sockets, I just topped it off with more purple cleaner. After 2 8 min cycles with heat. And a rinse with tap water.
I was surprised to see the pulley come out spotless. THe screwdriver felt like new (minus all writing on the handle), and one bolt was clean and shiny, the other clean and rusty.
I bought the cleaner for cleaning bike chains, which it works excellent for. The cleaner really gets all the dirt and grease out of all the links in a bike chain. I would not use it to clean heavily caked on grease from parts. But for cleaning tools shortly after use I think it would work awesome.
Heres the collection of old USA made (and several bench top) sockets I found at work while digging through the extra socket box.
They were pretty old meaning the grease packed into them has been there for some time.
Sockets on the basket in the cleaner.
I filled the cleaner about 1/4 with a purple cleaner. I don't know the brand, but its pretty strong stuff. Filled the rest of the way with tap water.
I used a old hand cleaner container to get the water. THe cloudy white stuff is dried hand cleaner. I didn't take it out because I figured it would be a little extra cleaning power
The Chicago Ultrasonic cleaner has run time options of 90 sec, 180 sec, 280 sec, 380 sec, and 480 sec. It also has a heat function. I really wish it had longer time settings. I always use the 480 sec time with heat.
Heres what it looked like after 2 8 min cycles.
A little vid I took of it working. The mic on my camera was not liking the ultrasonic sounds.
After about an hour and several cycles the temp was 111.8
To be fair I started with every thing at around 40 degrees. This beer is room temp
After about 5 or 6 8 min cycles and a little over an hour in the cleaner I removed the sockets and rinsed them with tap water. The results
You can see almost all the dirt and grease was removed. The dark areas are mostly rust.
I searched my garage and bike room high and low looking for more dirty/greasy stuff and couldn't come up with much. My OCD has me cleaning my tools after each use. So heres the dirtiest stuff I could come up with. A CMan Pro screw driver with a couple years worth of oil film on the rubber handle, a couple old bolts, and a pulley from a old bike dreailuer. The pulley was pretty caked with grease, but it is a wax based chain lube I use.
I used the same solution as the sockets, I just topped it off with more purple cleaner. After 2 8 min cycles with heat. And a rinse with tap water.
I was surprised to see the pulley come out spotless. THe screwdriver felt like new (minus all writing on the handle
), and one bolt was clean and shiny, the other clean and rusty.I bought the cleaner for cleaning bike chains, which it works excellent for. The cleaner really gets all the dirt and grease out of all the links in a bike chain. I would not use it to clean heavily caked on grease from parts. But for cleaning tools shortly after use I think it would work awesome.
