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That $80 ultrasonic cleaner that stripped my shutter blades
Tbh I thought I was being smart buying a cheap ultrasonic cleaner off Amazon to speed up my parts cleaning. Ran a shutter assembly through it with some degreaser and the blades came out looking like tinfoil after a fireworks show. The vibration was way too aggressive for the thin metal, and now I'm out the money plus a donor shutter I had to pull from a parts body. Anyone else had bad luck with ultrasonic cleaning on delicate assemblies, or is there a specific setting that actually works?
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hernandez.jordan16d ago
Man, that sucks. I did the same thing with a cheap one and a rangefinder's slow-speed escapement. It came out sounding like a bag of gravel, totally wrecked the pivots.
The real kicker is these budget units don't have a way to drop the power. Mine runs at full blast no matter what, so it's useless for anything smaller than a lens group.
I've heard the trick is to run it way below 40kHz and keep the time under a minute, but the cheap ones just don't give you that control. Did you check the basket, or did you just drop the parts straight in?
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