Idea's on a good Sonic Cleaner

[Leaky88]

Hi,

I would like to purchase a Sonic Cleaner.
Thinking a 4LT would suffice.
This is a "want" and not a "need", so I'm hoping to get it right.
There is a sea of them on eBay and Amazon, all from China, with 4-star ratings, a limited 1-year warranty etc.
MHO, reviews are like the news, what do you trust?

Does anyone have one that has held up with time. A company that provided support and/or replacement parts even.

Thanks.

Leaky

 

[todd_fuller]

I recently went down this rabbit hole. I bought a model with degas, pulse, sweep, the works. Except it only did 1/3 of the rated ultrasonic power. The heater works great though.

From my research on eevblog, the models with the two manual knobs for timer and temp. are the most reliable/meet specs. Based on my experience, I'm going to say that that is probably a fair assessment.

A drain is nice, but you may consider it a risk unless you know it's all stainless or change everything to stainless fittings so they don't corrode.

 

[humpty]

At work all we have are Branson and they stand up to the abuse pretty darn good. About the only failures we have are related to fluid infiltration issues(not the U/S fault) and knuckleheads using the pointy end of an air gun on the start button.

As stated above, the less doo dads on an U/S the more reliable they usually are.

Personally I picked up a used Branson at a surplus auction for $50, couldn't be happier.

I have friends with the generic Chinese U/S from eBay and the like and they have worked for them, if you're not going to run production on them I'd think they'd be fine.

humpty

 

[Rinspeed]

My best advice is to buy a quality unit used from Ebay. A decent one will set you back around $500 but will be way the hell better than the made in China ****. Branson, Crest, Blackstone and L&R are some of the high quality ones.

 

[Davefr]

It's can very risky buying a used ultrasonic cleaner. They are electro-mechanical devices and the transducers gradually loose their performance over time. In addition the tanks can develop erosion and eventually leak. If the user has ever run the tank dry or placed a heavy item directly on the bottom of the tank the transducers can be damaged and/or electronics fried. If you buy used, make sure you test it thoroughly (ie foil test) and have the right to return it.

The Chinese units aren't that bad, except for the HF "toy". They typically have wimpy heaters, lack features like sweep, pulse, degass, dual frequency, etc. However just about all ultrasonic cleaners have about the same average ultrasonic power for a given tank size. Most of the no name Chinese units are produced by these guys and rebranded:

https://www.bjultrasonic.com/

Search ultrasonic cleaner. There's lot of posts here at GJ.