diy ultrasonic cleaner

[eschneider]

anyone know how to build an ultrasonic cleaner?

the commercial units are pretty spendy.

Perusing ebay, transducers are available for $30-$50. Makes sense you could drive one with an audio amp, but when it comes to electronics, I'm a plug-and-play guy.

I searched the innernet, but came up mostly empty for information on using off-the-shelf components.

Anyone know much about building these things?

 

[beaulieu]

does the transducer mount to the pan or just close,

you can get good stainless steel pans that they use for heating food at resturants , the ones they put a small heater under to keep the food above warm......

 

[GregW]

I would think the transducer would mount inside the tank.

 

[SunbeamTom]

We use ultrasonic cleaners at work, These are fairly large units built in Utah, the one used the most has about 40 transducers bonded(some type of epoxy I believe) to the outside bottom of the tank (Stainless steel) it also has two "generators" which drive half of the transducers each. No doubt these things clean, I'd like to clean everything I work on in one of these unfortunately I don't think anyone at the shop would be too happy to find grease in the sonic cleaner. We clean computer parts in them.

Tom j

 

[roger_abbott]

Ultrasonic cleaners are great where the circumstances are right. For removing liquid oils, they really work (I lucked into a gov't surplus unit that holds 10 gallons). For removing caked on grease, they don't. It may be that I haven't found the right cleaner fluid (I use Simple Green and water mixed 10:1), but I really think the caked on mixture of grease and dirt simply absorbs the sonic wave like rubber.

My solution so far has been to soak the pieces in parts cleaner, scrape off what I can and then put them in the ultrasonic cleaner, then repeat as necessary.

My next step is to put an immersion heater in the ultrasonic tank, to warm the solution up to around 140-150 degrees. I hope to make the detergent more effective that way.

However, for $300 to $400, there are small cleaners - tank size 12" L x 6" W x 3" D - that would be ideal for cleaning the thousands of small parts that go into every car. The advantage is that once the parts are dried, they are clean enough to prime.

 

[SunbeamTom]

Actually our cleaners are heated, 130-150 works pretty good, what your putting in the tank makes a huge difference (cleaner wise) I'll have to check to see what they put in there. I don't think it's too toxic !!!!

Tom J