Tumbling vs ultrasonic

[Pyrodyne]

What would be the benefit of using an ultrasonic cleaner over a tumbler?
Could you use the ultrasonic cleaner to clean off resizing oil?

[Dubious_Beans]

I'm guessing that ultrasonic probably cleans the inside of the brass better than tumbling.

[Pyrodyne]

There certainly is proof of that, i can post a link once im home. I am curious if anyone has done both and prefers one over the other after trying both methods.

[shooting4life]

You don't have to clean primmer pockets if that is your thing with ultrasonic

[Chief-7700]

Don't really care what the inside of a straight walled pistol case looks like since the dies never touch that part of the case, and I don't clean primer pockets either.

[EricClay]

There certainly is proof of that, i can post a link once im home. I am curious if anyone has done both and prefers one over the other after trying both methods.

I've used both and now use a third method. I clean using stainless steel pin's as the media. This is a wet process.

The advantages are:
No messy media to get all over the place, no toxic dust, cleans inside, outside and primer pockets and leaves the brass looking better then new.

The downside is there is a drying time and you'll want to deprime your brass before sizing.

Eric

[brando]

Yeah SS is all the rage now. Ultrasonic has it's advantages bit can be time consuming as you need to do small batches of brass at a time. As mentioned, it definitely cleans inside and out and does a great job with primer pockets. Still I wouldn't rely entirely on ultrasonic if you process in high volume.

[mif_slim]

I have both, my match brass goes into ultrasonic and my plunk/hunt brass goes into tumbler. no reason why just that my match brass.. I want to look newer and I want all the stuff inside gone.

[C.G.]

Yeah SS is all the rage now. Ultrasonic has it's advantages bit can be time consuming as you need to do small batches of brass at a time. As mentioned, it definitely cleans inside and out and does a great job with primer pockets. Still I wouldn't rely entirely on ultrasonic if you process in high volume.

What Brando said. I don't process in high volume and have very little space, so ultrasonic is the choice for me.

[mnguyen84]

http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=324797

[Pyrodyne]

What Brando said. I don't process in high volume and have very little space, so ultrasonic is the choice for me.

What size cleaner do you have? I am eyeballing a used 2.5 gallon heated unit. I imagine a lot of .223 will fit in it. The price is about on par with the cheapest of tumblers.

[C.G.]

What size cleaner do you have? I am eyeballing a used 2.5 gallon heated unit. I imagine a lot of .223 will fit in it. The price is about on par with the cheapest of tumblers.

2.5 gallons is huge you should be able to process a lot with that size. I just have the 2.5 liter with a heater:

http://www.harborfreight.com/25-liter-ultrasonic-cleaner-95563.html

[m1911umc]

ultrasonic

here a good one i use simple green in my ultrasonic and brass comes out great ,that is everyone else use in there ultrasonic

[Pyrodyne]

This is the link that got me on this trail:

http://www.6mmbr.com/ultrasonic.html

Typical time seems to be 48 minutes according to the article. If the 2.5 gallon cleaner can handle a lot of brass, I imagine this will have higher output than tumbling, and cleaner cases. I was thinking for a drier I can get a cheapy walmart appliance and harvest the heating unit and use my old charcoal BBQ to speed up drying. It should have about the same capacity as the cleaner i'm looking at.

[killshot44]

With Ultrasonic, you still have to dump solutions and rinse...

I used a friend's Stainless Media and rotary tumbler. It does clean the inside of the case but the outside looks about the same as vibratory tumbling with walnut. No difference in velocities.

I'm keeping my walnut and tumbler....