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Having seen them on You Tube and hearing here about an Ultrasonic record cleaning machine costing thousands I asked my wife for an Ultrasonic tank for Christmas.
After about a days work and a few pounds worth of bits it's ready to rock and roll. Tank is 10 litres and cost £110 including delivery, my wife's happy as i can clean all her jewellery for her.
Too many years ago I studied Applied Physics at Brunel University West London, the man for Ultrasonics in the department was Dr Jack Blitz. I searched on the web and found one of his books scanned online. According to I presume the now late Dr Blitz best temperature for Ultrasonic Cavitation is 60C best fluid is water with 10% alcohol I'm adding to the mix a good slug of the Disc Doctor cleaning fluid and I'm just about to test it all out. I was a bit worried about 60C but tried it with a spare LP and it was fine. I'll report back on the results
Follow Ups:
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Well I'm very pleased. The manufacturer of the machine suggested run it for a maximum of 15 minutes before resting for 5 minutes. So I ran for 15 minutes, as the records are rotating into the fluid ata rate of 1rpm only about 25% is immersed at a time so effective cleaning time is just under 4 minutes. I tried it first with 4 newly purchased but scruffy used records. First off the tank produced some foam but as the fluid degassed this settled down.
My technique is to first use a carbon fibre brush to remove obvious large debris, then hand clean with Disc Doctor brushes followed by a rinse under a filtered water tap and hand dry. Then the spindle is loaded. I leave the room for the running as the noise is unpleasant. Discs are unloaded and rinsed under filtered water before water removal by a record machine vacuum. Then racked for any remaining liquid and damp labels to dry.
Results were good with very little background noise. Second batch was some precious and much played records that had gone noisy over time. I tried 2 15 minute cycles with a 10 minute gap in between. Result was excellent Lots more detail and nuance in the guitar from Blood on the tracks and background noise gone. Joni Mitchell's Blue quiet background more detail from the guitar again noticeable. I'm not convinced 2 cycles improved things so I'll try next time with just 1 cleaning cycle.
So overall I'm very pleased. Attached is Dr Blitz's graph on impact of temperature on cavitation.
Ahhh... thanks for posting this.
I am about to get ready to purchase all the gear needed to build my own ultrasonic cleaner as well.
Let us know how just the single cycle helps with noisy records.
Cleaning routine of Brush with Carbon fibre brush, hand clean with Disc Doc fluid then rinse and dry before loading into the Ultrasonic. Single cycle of Ultrasonic cleaning for 15 minutes works fine. I follow it by vacumming off the excess water and then leaving in a rack for final drying.
Temperature and surfacants and wetting seem most crucial elements. I've tried hand cleaning with Disc Doctor Fluid and the usual forum recommended fluid of 20% IPA in distilled water with Photographic wetting agent. Of the two I much prefer the Disc Doctor's fluid, it builds up a little foam and feels like cleaning, the IPA mix doesn't seem to penetrate to the surface so well.
I really feel I have now reached optimum in record cleaning so I can buy non scratched but dirty used records with confidence. But there are no shortcuts.
I bought one for Christmas too, but mine squeals pretty loudly. Yours?
Horrendous noise, I have to leave the room while it operates.
Be careful at 60C. Use a meat thermometer to confirm the accuracy of the digital temp readout at several points in the tank. With strong cavitation and slow rotational speed I've melted LPs at 48C. Moreover, if the machine has a strong pulse action, the temp will rise around 5C each 15 minutes of use.
Edits: 12/27/17 12/27/17 12/27/17
Thanks for that I'll check
Nice setup! Some add a surfactant too. Let us know how it works.
Duane Goldman the Disc Doctor has the surfactants pretty well covered, my problem will be getting the quantity of Disc Doctor fluid right.
if you haven't seen it but I'm guessing you may have? You probably already know more than some of these folks considering the misinformation that appears on the web.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/analogue-source/218276-version-ultrasonic-record-cleaner.html?s=0d000e606bd71e068dd6ba2c72e8e28e
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