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Ultrasonic Chip Cleaning (25 Viewers)

Is $120 the standard for a new 6L? Should I be waiting/looking for a better price?
 
If you sign up for harbor freight text-alerts the first one is a 25% coupon. New signups only :)
 
Just pulled the trigger on an Ultrasonic. It won’t arrive for a few weeks. A couple of years ago I never thought that I’d need one. Then again, I never planned on having this many chips to clean! That and the fact that the arthritis in my hands seem to be getting worse made this an easy decision!
 
Mongoose said:
Just pulled the trigger on an Ultrasonic. It won’t arrive for a few weeks. A couple of years ago I never thought that I’d need one. Then again, I never planned on having this many chips to clean! That and the fact that the arthritis in my hands seem to be getting worse made this an easy decision!
Click to expand...

What did you get? And which chippies are going to be the first to take a bath?
 
BearMetal said:
What did you get? And which chippies are going to be the first to take a bath?
Click to expand...
Well, I guess this isn’t happening. Bought a Vevor 6L on eBay from fjcgz17 for $120. The order was confirmed but then I get an email that says “so sorry for the inconvenience, your parcel met an unexpected problem?” WTF does that mean? Paid with cc, expecting stated refund but bummed that I’m not getting it.
 
Mongoose said:
Well, I guess this isn’t happening. Bought a Vevor 6L on eBay from fjcgz17 for $120. The order was confirmed but then I get an email that says “so sorry for the inconvenience, your parcel met an unexpected problem?” WTF does that mean? Paid with cc, expecting stated refund but bummed that I’m not getting it.
Click to expand...

ARRRRGGGGGG! :mad: WTF - all of the 6Ls are out. There are some other brands, but I cannot vouch for them. Anyone else here have a non-Vevor 6L brand that they could recommend for Mongoose?
 
dmoney said:
Can you explain a little? Earlier posts in this thread recommend at least 140W of cleaning power, and the Harbor Freight model is listed at 160W.
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It's less about wattage and more about the # of transducers. I believe the Vevor 6L has something like 8 transducers. How many does the one from HB have?
 
Also, @dmoney, consider the shape of that US cleaner from Harbor Freight. You really do need to agitate the chips during the cleaning process (hence the salad spinner from the OP. How would you constantly agitate them in that model?
 
boyo25guy said:
Hi everybody,

Thanks for all of the advice in this thread. I picked up my first real set of chips in the Cleveland HS sale, and definitely didn’t want to clean over 500 filthy chips by hand. I thought I’d provide a review on Harbor Freight’s ultrasonic cleaner, since I haven’t see that one reviewed on PCF yet.

The Harbor Freight ultrasonic cleaner is $80 (although the 20% off coupons bring it to $64 before tax), and is listed as a 160W machine. That said, it’s my understanding that only 60W is due to the single transducer in the machine, and the other 100W is due to the heater. This means that the ultrasonic portion of the cleaner is much less powerful than most of the other units discussed in this thread. I knew this going in, but given that I’m really not planning on buying many more chips beyond this one, I was loath to spend any more money on a nicer unit.

So how did it do? Overall, it worked pretty well. The first couple of batches of 1s took a fairly long time to clean until I got the proper method down. I was pretty sure that the salad spinner listed in the original post wasn’t going to fit in this unit, and so I opted to put about 30 chips in the cleaner (using the plastic basket which comes with the unit) and agitate them with a spoon. This produced mixed results. Some of the chips came out really white, but others still had some gunk on them. By reducing the batch to 10 chips, and running the cleaner for about 2.5 minutes, I was able to get pretty good results. A couple of them looked a little grey compared to the really white ones, but another 90-second run got them looking much better. Apologies for the bad camera work--I was in the middle of cleaning stuff and didn't want to spend a ton of time on taking pictures. The clean chips in the lower-left is an example of a chip which came out a little grey at first.

View attachment 73176

The 5s, 25s, and 100s went much easier. 10 chips per batch at 60 seconds were enough to leave them looking nice and clean, with no gunk in any part of the mold.

View attachment 73177

Overall, I’d say that if you’re just looking to purchase this unit for a one-off set of chips, this cleaner is a viable choice. If you think you’re going to be doing multiple sets over time, though, one of the multiple-transducer options is probably a better bet for you. I’m happy with the results I got, but the small batches took a lot of time.
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Looks like @boyo25guy had about the same idea as I did, and indicated that although it's listed at 160W, it is only 60W of cleaning power from a single transducer and 100W of heating power. I think I'll reconsider, and look forward to reading suggestions from others on models currently available.
 
Looks like too many were trying to buy salad spinners today. www.amazon.com is down.

2020-05-28_15-34-58.png
 
BearMetal said:
ARRRRGGGGGG! :mad: WTF - all of the 6Ls are out. There are some other brands, but I cannot vouch for them. Anyone else here have a non-Vevor 6L brand that they could recommend for Mongoose?
Click to expand...

These are in stock, if the other ones arent back yet - picked it up for $100
EAE76931-59C7-400B-8DD9-C952BA671A00.jpeg


Not sure how good it is, but i guess we’ll see soon enough lol
 
juankay20 said:
These are in stock, if the other ones arent back yet - picked it up for $100
View attachment 471147

Not sure how good it is, but i guess we’ll see soon enough lol
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I picked up one of these as well (assuming is the 3L variety?). Please share any best practices on temp of water, amount of cleaner, number of chips and length of cleaning!
 
dmoney said:
I picked up one of these as well (assuming is the 3L variety?). Please share any best practices on temp of water, amount of cleaner, number of chips and length of cleaning!
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Found the 6L with an offer section :) Will do - and please do the same!
 
dmoney said:
Sidenote: Harbor Freight coupons are all active through June 30 last time I saw. Is that right? I'll be looking for one of those 20% off any item coupons if so.
Click to expand...
You can find all coupons in the Harbor Freight Coupon Database: https://www.hfqpdb.com/
You can search by item number to find all up-to-date applicable coupons and use the best one.
HF will also scan them off your phone so you don't have to print them either.
 
dmoney said:
I picked up one of these as well (assuming is the 3L variety?). Please share any best practices on temp of water, amount of cleaner, number of chips and length of cleaning!
Click to expand...

Water temp 43C, consider 38C for Red base colour chips. Follow directions on the type of cleaner for correct concentration, use enough detergent volume to be able to comfortably spin your salad spinner without causing a lot of splashing (in a 6L unit, I fill up to about 2.5L). For not very dirty chips, I use about 1 minute per batch of 40 chips. For very dirty chips, I use 2 minutes.
 
allforcharity said:
Water temp 43C, consider 38C for Red base colour chips. Follow directions on the type of cleaner for correct concentration, use enough detergent volume to be able to comfortably spin your salad spinner without causing a lot of splashing (in a 6L unit, I fill up to about 2.5L). For not very dirty chips, I use about 1 minute per batch of 40 chips. For very dirty chips, I use 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

I've gone lower - 30s to 45s for lightly soiled Paulsons.
 
allforcharity said:
Water temp 43C, consider 38C for Red base colour chips. Follow directions on the type of cleaner for correct concentration, use enough detergent volume to be able to comfortably spin your salad spinner without causing a lot of splashing (in a 6L unit, I fill up to about 2.5L). For not very dirty chips, I use about 1 minute per batch of 40 chips. For very dirty chips, I use 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

Do you find that red based colored chips tend to fade at a higher temp?
 
allforcharity said:
Follow directions on the type of cleaner for correct concentration, use enough detergent volume to be able to comfortably spin your salad spinner without causing a lot of splashing
Click to expand...

This is an interesting statement. I, too, originally did this. And then I noticed that (in very poor English) the manual for mine specifically said you need to fill it at least 2/3rds of the way in order for the full effect of cleaning. True enough, filling 2/3 produced superior results for me. At the cost of splashing ... so I use towels over all surfaces and do it right next to the sink.
 

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