Please tell me about ultrasonic cleaners

I’m thinking about buying an ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning bike chains etc. I’ve never seen such a thing, so I’d like to know if there’s anything to look out for in terms of size and features etc.

You need to spend £150 to get the right spec (that works)

That’s an expensive chain cleaner

Yep, what he said. The little £30 ones are total pap.

Thanks. That’s within budget. Are there any makes worth looking at? Is one with a heater worth the extra?

Would assume it vibrates all the crud loose, but how does it get any crud out from nooks and crannies once it’s turned to dust?

I’d just shout at the thing. Surely more satisfying.

That or chuck the chain in degreaser like everyone else, or better still stop cleaning your bike so much 😉

I don’t get the facination with ultra sonic cleaners – I use them at work and have tried to clean up a seized bb7 with our most aggressive one.

Didn’t do a lot tbh.

The ones I know about use a liquid medium to convey the ultrasonic waves to whatever it is you have put in them (water for us, then you place whatever is the cleaning agent in a beaker in the water and place the item in the beaker – safer to have large volumes of water then other chemicals.

They are very good for breaking down stuff like sandstone/dirt/crystalline structures but rubbish as soon as you move to plastics/grease/oil/wood etc.

Save your money and invest in degreaser, industrial marigolds and either a brush or a big jam jar.

I got a small one, roughly £50 and it does sort of work but only if the chain is lighly soiled, i.e, months of baked on oily grime will not wash off.
I used it a few times but now reverted back to the plastice tub and paraffin/white spirit and long handle scrubber….

I feel pretty much the same…
I got one a few years back, about 150 quid, big enough for cassette and suchlike
used it a bit then went back to the paraffin one TBH…
useful for cleaning inside rear mech springs and the like. these days I just replace them!
Id sell mine for a token amount (maybe 20 quid?) plus postage as its just gathering dust
email in profile if your interested in having a go

Yikes. Quick way to ruin a chain. Trick with ownership of a chain is to keep the surface clean whilst maintaining the factory lubrication in each roller bushing for as long as possible.

Following advice of KMC and Shimano, I’d never clean my chains with anything more aggressive than warm soapy water.

It’s interesting to hear the real world experiences. They don’t sound too good for this application, although I’ll have a think about your one, Jim, and maybe drop you an email.

I’ve decided to try a different chain maintenance routine, and was thinking about trying paraffin wax or Squirt. It seems that you need to clean out the manufacturer’s grease, and then after that the chain stays pretty clean and you can probably just wash it down prior to subsequent treatments. However, I thought an ultrasonic cleaner would let me clean them in the house rather than degrease them outdoors, and it would be easy to rotate a couple of chains with minimal faff. However, it sounds like more traditional methods are better.

Having always thought those plastic chain cleaners with the gears and brushes were a bit of a gimmick, I’m now using a Park one to great affect. A month of 60km a day commute in all weather, just chucking lube on when it got audible and it came out gleaming. Pedros one looks a good design.

I have used an expensive one at work, or tried to for greasy bike parts. It’s not really designed for that kind of thing.
I have however bought a small Clark parts washer that circulates a degreasing fluid through a hose. It’s great. And cheaper than ultra sonic.
Same as this
https://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/search/filter/parts-washers-blast-cabinets/type/any/module/shopcategory/page/1

Yikes. Quick way to ruin a chain.

An ultra sonic cleaner is not going to damage a chain in any way shape or form.

Depends if you subscribe to the “remove every possible trace of lubrication from the internal and external surfaces of a chain” as being the way to clean one, or the way to kill one!

esher shore – Member
Trick with ownership of a chain is to keep the surface clean whilst maintaining the factory lubrication in each roller bushing for as long as possible.

That or degrease and and apply Squirt, then treat it the same as having good factory lube inside with the addition that you don’t put oil on the outside of the chain any more, just the odd bit of squirt from time to time. It stays shiny after a wipe or gentle hose down and the cassette is not a blackened mess.

I tried Squirt once without much success. Chain started sounding rough after only a few miles. I followed the instructions properly for applying it but maybe I didn’t degrease the chain thoroughly enough first so all the Squirt fell off?!

At £150 for a cleaner, is it not cheaper just to buy a new chain ever 3-6 months?

My experience of ultrasonic cleaners is similar to above, I can’t see them doing my to remove greasy grime.

give me £150 and I’ll clean your chain for you

I use a cheapy Aldi one every so often, with boiling water. Boiling water is an excellent degreaser.

1) Wipe excess gunk off chain
2) Put chain in ultrasonic cleaner with boiling water for a couple of cycles
3) Take chain out (with pliers, cos it’ll be hot)
4) Hang chain from nail, give it a wipe
5) Chain dries itself, cos it’s hot
6) Put back on bike, lube’n’go

🙂

I made an ‘ultrasonic’ cleaner when I was a kid for RC car parts using a cheap RC car motor (standard 540) with an off centre weight glued to a pinion gear. Held the motor in a vice and help the part to be cleaned in a beaker of cleaning fluid on top of the vice. Made lots of noise but shook all the crap off/out very quickly 🙂

Boiling water is an excellent degreaser.

Is that true even for synthetic lubes? Interesting.

Having always thought those plastic chain cleaners with the gears and brushes were a bit of a gimmick, I’m now using a Park one to great affect. A month of 60km a day commute in all weather, just chucking lube on when it got audible and it came out gleaming. Pedros one looks a good design.

+1, I got the muck-off one that attached to the aerosol of degreaser. Chain, chainring and at least one cassette ring spotless in about 8 seconds!

Rinse with a hose, wipe off any excess black gunk on the cassette, soak in GT85, go faff with something else and let it dry, add lube, wipe off before next ride.

Is that true even for synthetic lubes? Interesting.

Degreasers are just surfactants, surfactants break down the sruface tension to allow microscopic droplets to form (rather than a seperate layer of oil), surface tension is a force stopping the formation of droplets (big drops require less energy than small as there’s less surface area per unit volume), force x distance = energy, so you need to add energy to break up droplets, heating it up (thermal enbergy) or sound waves (kinetic energy) are both effective ways of adding energy, degreaser/surfactants work in the opposite way and reduce the energy required.

Thanks for the science – I know that part 🙂

My point really was that if I have a chain cakes in road crap plus old chain lube it’s more of a layer than liquid oil and as such, I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to break up into droplets in the water, boiling or not. Maybe the ultrasonic action is enough to do that but I’m kind of surprised, particularly for the cheaper ones.

My point really was that if I have a chain cakes in road crap plus old chain lube it’s more of a layer than liquid oil

ahem

1) Wipe excess gunk off chain

My theory is that an old rage cleans the outside of the chain, the ultrasonic cleans the inside.

Maybe 🙂 I still find there’s more than just surface covering of crap inside the links though.

If it’s off the bike anyway, then dropping into a jamjar with some paraffin and giving it a shake works well. Maybe drain and put in fresh paraffin again if it’s really gunky.

Rinse, leave to dry, then back on the bike and re-lube.

Have tried a few of those cleaning contraptions that do it on the bike and just end up with filthy black stuff everywhere.

+1, I got the muck-off one that attached to the aerosol of degreaser. Chain, chainring and at least one cassette ring spotless in about 8 seconds!

I went through a couple of those (kept breaking the aerosol attachment) then found their X1 version in Halfords which is a lot sturdier (although you fill it with degreaser rather than use an aerosol).

I came across a white paper for using an ultrasonic cleaner in industry, and they reckon they don’t work very well on grease, especially dirty grease (presumably a well-used chain!) They said it would work, but it needs extra-long cleaning times.

I’ve bought some white spirit and meths, so will try those on a new chain. Perhaps it would be best to give an initial clean in those chemicals, and then an ultra sonic clean to remove any remaining dirt.

I’ve used the aerosol and Park chain cleaners. I think the aerosol one was quite good, and less messy, but I don’t think either would remove all traces of factory lube, and in my case I don’t want to get any grease on the rest of the drivetrain prior to using Squirt or paraffin wax.

Petrol and a paint brush cut short 🙂

deejayen – Member

I’ve used the aerosol and Park chain cleaners. I think the aerosol one was quite good, and less messy, but I don’t think either would remove all traces of factory lube, and in my case I don’t want to get any grease on the rest of the drivetrain prior to using Squirt or paraffin wax.

You’re overthinking it. Squirt wouldn’t sell aproduct that you could only apply in a laboratory clean room.

And an ultrasonic cleaner won’t clean it any more effectively than swirling it round in a jam jar of solvent, they’re better at breaking up lumps of stuff not golbules of grease (although they will evntualy) but if that glovule of grease is inside a chin link it won’t flush it out. If you really want to make it absolutely positively, over the top clean:

Jam jar of petrol or white spirit or diesel to dissolve the grease
Jam jar of acetone or meths to remove the first solvent
Jam jar of water to remove the 2nd solvent (the water will dry in air with no residue at all)

Or you could just use a chain cleaner full of jizzer and rinse it and save all that hastle.