How to Clean Brass with an Ultrasonic Cleaning Machine
Do you have some old, tired brass that needs a thorough cleaning — inside and out? Consider using an ultrasonic cleaning machine. When used with the proper solution, a good ultrasonic cleaning machine can quickly remove remove dust, carbon, oil, and powder residue from your cartridge brass. The ultrasonic process will clean the inside of the cases, and even the primer pockets. Tumbling works well too, but for really dirty brass, ultrasonic cleaning may be a wise choice.
READ FULL UltimateReloader.com Article on Ultrasonic Case Cleaning.
Our friend Gavin Gear recently put an RCBS Ultrasonic cleaning machine through its paces using RCBS Ultrasonic Case Cleaning Solution (RCBS #87058). To provide a real challenge, Gavin used some very dull and greasy milsurp brass: “I bought a huge lot of military once-fired 7.52x51mm brass (fired in a machine gun) that I’ve been slowly prepping for my DPMS LR-308B AR-10 style rifle. Some of this brass was fully prepped (sized/de-primed, trimmed, case mouths chamfered, primer pockets reamed) but it was gunked up with lube and looking dingy.”
UltimateReloader.com Case Cleaning Video (7.5 minutes):
Gavin describes the cleaning exercise step-by-step on UltimateReloader.com. Read Gavin’s Cartridge Cleaning Article to learn how he mixed the solution, activated the heater, and cycled the machine for 30 minutes. As you can see in the video above, the results were impressive. If you have never cleaned brass with ultrasound before, you should definitely watch Gavin’s 7.5-minute video — it provides many useful tips and shows the cleaning operation in progress from start to finish.
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The RCBS ultrasonic cleaning machine features a large 3-liter capacity, 60 watt transducer, and 100 watt ceramic heater. The RCBS ultrasonic machine can be found under $140.00, and this unit qualifies for RCBS Rebates ($10 off $50 purchase or $50 off $300.00 purchase). RCBS also sells 32 oz. bottles of cleaning concentrate that will make up to 10 gallons of Ultrasonic Solution.
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Tags: 7.62x51, Case Cleaning, Gavin Gear, Lubrication, RCBS, Solution, Tumbling, Ultrasonic, Ultrasound, Wet Cleaning
If anyone has tried both ultrasonic and stainless steel media tumbling, I’m curious which you prefer and why.
Stainless will clean better especially primer pockets. ultrasonic solution has to be changed often to really clean the brass. You can take range brass that is black and make it look like new with stainless… Can’t do that with an ultra sonic alone
irright, Steel tumbling hands down. Tried a few different options with the Ultrasonic machine and didn’t get great results. Sent the Hornady machine back. The steel tumbling worked the first time with no fuss and no one getting burned.
Tried stainless steel pins, then went back to ultrasonic. Ultrasonic doesn’t get the brass as shinny, but it doesn’t beat down the case mouths like stainless steel tumbling does.
If you look at the picture on the right above, you can see that the cases still have the chamfering and deburring taper on the case mouths after they come out of the ultrasonic. They’re mushroomed and rolled over like they are on new cases when they come out of the stainless steel tumbling. This can be trimmed off the first couple times, but the OAL eventually gets below trim length then removing the “burr” is a PITA.
Right on Kris!
Don’t give a rats behind if my brass doesn’t look as “pretty” out of my ultrasonic-it does ZERO physically to the brass to change anything and the brass is clean.
The occasional half-hearted swipe with a primer pocket cleaner to finish up alittle primer stain in the occasional primer pocket takes less time than what’s required to check EVERY piece of brass to insure there’s no media in the primer hole.
The brass that comes from my bolt guns looks almost as good as tumbled anyway. Doesn’t matter though-I care about if the brass is clean enough to reload and it is.
I’ll stick with my ultrasonic.