Sonic cleaners...yay or nay?

[boisepaw]

I've got a vibratory tumbler...taking the time to make sure that I get all the media out of each piece of brass when I'm done and wiping off the dust.

I've got a rotary tumbler...taking the time to shake out the water and then put each piece into a dehydrator to dry them off before reloading.

What about a sonic cleaner? Do those get the brass nice and clean and shiny? Without having to follow up with messy media or wet cases?

Or any great ideas about how to better use the vibratory or rotary tumblers?

 

[BUFF7MM]

Any sonic cleaner I’ve ever seen requires some sort of liquid whether it be soap and water or some type of solvent, so you still need to do post cleaning work.
I sonic clean my suppressors and wet tumble my brass. When I’m seperating my pins from brass the separator does a good job with getting rid of most of the water, I just have an old bath towel I dump them out on and shake them a bit then just let the towel lay on my bench with them for a day or so and they are completely dry and ready to reload.

 

[outrider58]

I've got a vibratory tumbler...taking the time to make sure that I get all the media out of each piece of brass when I'm done and wiping off the dust.

I've got a rotary tumbler...taking the time to shake out the water and then put each piece into a dehydrator to dry them off before reloading.

What about a sonic cleaner? Do those get the brass nice and clean and shiny? Without having to follow up with messy media or wet cases?

Or any great ideas about how to better use the vibratory or rotary tumblers?

I've tried all three and decided vibratory tumbling works the best for me. I use a fairly course walnut shell medium and add a little Nu Finish car wax, diluted with mineral spirits. The courser walnut helps immensely to reduce dust. I've never found it necessary to 'clean' my cleaned brass. I prefer 12-20 grit walnut shell. It works very well and is virtually dust free. Well worth the money.

Amazon product ASIN B07QX81JZ7

 

[emerald]

I've only done sonic cleaning, and I've been pretty happy with the results. I wouldn't say it makes the brass sparkling new, but it definitely cleans it up, which is all I'm after. Just going to shoot it again.

 

[chale127]

Look into tumbling with stainless steel pins....I've been lookin at this for a while and might switch

 

[trickg]

I've got a vibratory tumbler...taking the time to make sure that I get all the media out of each piece of brass when I'm done and wiping off the dust.

I've got a rotary tumbler...taking the time to shake out the water and then put each piece into a dehydrator to dry them off before reloading.

What about a sonic cleaner? Do those get the brass nice and clean and shiny? Without having to follow up with messy media or wet cases?

Or any great ideas about how to better use the vibratory or rotary tumblers?

Based on a recommendation I saw on a Facebook reloaders group, I ordered a 40 lb box of 20-40 grit corn cob blast media from Zoro, and that ended up being a great decision for me. Corn cob has much less dust than walnut, and 20-40 grit is small enough that you don't even really have to work about it getting stuck in primer pockets if you want to tumble decapped, although I always tend to run my brass through a sizing/decapping die when I reload, so IF any media is in the flash hole it gets knocked out by the decapping pin.

Dust from that media is easy to manage with used dryer sheets and a drizzle of mineral spirits.

For my uses, I see no reason to move to wet tumbling or sonic cleaning, although I have heard that both work very well. Yes, guys like to go on and on about getting clean primer pockets with wet tumbling. Unless you are a competition shooter and need the absolute very best from your brass, cleaning out your primer pockets is totally unnecessary, and truthfully, I really don't care how shiny my reloads are - I only need them to be clean.

I get good results with the 20-40 grit corn cob - it both cleans and polishes, and that's all I need it to do.

 

[spoon059]

I borrowed a tumbler from someone here and used that, worked great. I found that the stainless pins would get caught inside necked brass, so I tried tumbling without the pins and it came out really good in my opinion.

I gave away my vibratory tumbler because I was cleaning in my basement and didn't want that lead dust inside the house. I use a sonic cleaner now, until I can convince the boss to let me buy a tumbler.

For drying I dump them onto some old towels and my son and I just roll the brass back and forth a bunch to get most of the water out. Then I switch to a dry towel, spread the brass out on the towel and leave it either in front of the hybrid water heater or the woodstove. After about an hour, we roll the brass a couple times. Comes out clean without spotting.

 

[guzma393]

Ultrasonic cleaners will still lead to wet cases. I personally like to wet tumble without stainless steel pins. The frankford arsenal wet/dry media separator makes short work on separating water and SS pins out of the brass. https://www.frankfordarsenal.com/ca...separators/wetdry-media-separator/507567.html

I like to wet tumble without SS pins because it's the fastest (20 minutes of tumbling) of the other methods for the amount of volume I am cleaning. I use the frankford arsenal rotary tumbler (FART) and it includes 2 strainers that installs along the plugs on each end.
After tumbling, I replace the plug with the strainer and drain as much waste water as possible. I then stand up the drum, strainer side up and fill up the drum with fresh water and drain it again to rinse off any remaining soapy residue and waste water.
I then use the frankford arsenal wet/dry media separator to shake off any more additional water from the cases. I then use 2 sets of drying towels (old bath towels) to further tumble dry the cases (boat method).
I use the first towel to remove further excess moisture, then use the second towel to remove residual moisture. The brass is then placed in an old air fryer and left to dry in 170F/one hour. The cleaning solution i use is 2 capfuls of armorall wax n' shine carwash, and a 45 acp case of lemishine (citric acid) + clean water (hot for removing stubborn case lube, cold/room temperature for general use).

 

[boisepaw]

Look into tumbling with stainless steel pins....I've been lookin at this for a while and might switch

My rotary tumbler has steel pins which I used the first couple of times. But then it was making sure that I got every one of those little tiny pins out of every single case.

 

[alucard0822]

IMO ultrasonics, dry media, and wet tumblers all do different things, and all can serve in your case prep.

I like the Ultrasonic for cleaning dirty range brass. No need to sort it first, good for water and oil soluble dirt, dump the dirt and fouling down the sink. The brass will be clean inside and out, but still discolored as this won't polish it. I use simplegreen for brass. Using CLR in the ultrasonic works excellent for suppressor baffles and some steel gun parts where the finish/coating doesn't matter. For brass, I use a caliber separator to shake out most water and separate calibers, then dry in an old airfrying toaster oven. The oven has large frying baskets to spread out and dry brass and baffles, 10min at 150, and about 500-1000 peices of 9mm or 5.56 is bone dry.

Dry media takes a long time, creates dust, gets dirty media fast, and doesn't clean inside of brass all that well. It is relatively gentle, simple, and the polished brass looks awesome. I use this for second or final cleaning often, using a decapping die if I am loading decapped brass that was tumbled to get media out of the flash hole/primer pocket. I use the ultrasonic for range brass, and use a progressive press for most calibers. For Rifle brass, I lube/size/decap, then tumble to polish it, trim/deburr/decrimp off press, then back to the press to load it. For handgun with carbide dies, I tumble brass first with spent primers in place, then load it completely. 9mm with it's taper can be tough to size without a little lube, some other calibers can also benefit from lube, and don't need a separate trim/deburr operation. I tumble/polish, add a little lube, then load it completely. The final step is a quick 20-30min tumble of loaded ammo in corncob media to get the lube off and polish the cases. Have researched it extensively, being powder is tumbled during manufacture, and the tumbler can't produce enough force to ignite a primer, i'm comfortable with this process, and probably 10K+ rounds of 9mm I have loaded in this way, and many other competitive shooters do the same with far more loaded rounds.

Wet tumbling with stainless pins combines the benefits of wet sonic cleaning with polishing like dry media. Compared to ultrasonic there is an extra step to use a magnet or separator to get pins out of the brass. Compared to dry tumbling the brass has to dry, and might not be polished as bright as dry tumbling can do, but it's awesome for cleaning primer pockets and inside of brass as it combines mechanical/abrasion with wet solvents. It is more important to make sure all the pins are out. Unlike corncob media which usually won't stop a press or damage a barrel, a couple pins left behind could. Like ultrasonic cleaning, I flush with hot water, tumble in a media separator, and dry in my repurposed air frying oven.

 

[Defense Initiative]

I use dish soap and water. Rinse the casings after cleaning them, and then let them air dry. Simple.

 

[trickg]

Anything dealing with wet tumbling is so much more than what I do - I dump the media and brass into a separator, tumble them around, and I'm DONE! No drying, no rolling around on towels, putting them in front of a heater, dehydrator, fan, etc. Just done. Finished. Ready to load.

Is a wet tumbler really faster when you consider the extra PITA that goes into making sure your brass is dry enough to load?

Dry tumbling doesn't take that much time either - I'm certainly never sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to finish. I load it up, start it, walk away, and then come back to it a couple of hours later. A good vibratory tumbler with treated media does a pretty good job and it does it fairly quickly.

Different strokes for different folks I guess, but it'll take some doing to convince me that wet tumbling is superior to dry tumbling in any kind of meaningful way.

 

[Harrys]

I decap all cases with a universal decaping tool. The put into a sonic cleaner for 30 minutes. The cases and primer pockets come out very clean but dull. Then I dry the cases and run them through my tumbler with lizard bedding which is super fine walnut shells. The make the cases look like that are brand new and the lizard bedding does not get stuck in the primer pockets.

 

[holesonpaper]

Over the years I've used all three manners - vibrator, wet tumble, and sonic.

For precision rifle loads, I've found that wet tumbling peens the case mouths and when that occurs your SD/ES increases. So for low count rifle, my preference by a slight margin is to sonic clean. If not sonic, then vibrate. Now I know I'm in the minority, but I prefer to clean my primer pockets and anneal all my precision rifle brass after each firing.

With sonic, the result is not as pretty as other methods but whatever.

For straight walled handgun calibers I prefer to wet tumble brass with SS media. It does an excellent job.

After cleaning via sonic or wet tumble, I put in a brass dryer for 30-40 minutes. It's not a big deal.

 

[lazarus]

Anything dealing with wet tumbling is so much more than what I do - I dump the media and brass into a separator, tumble them around, and I'm DONE! No drying, no rolling around on towels, putting them in front of a heater, dehydrator, fan, etc. Just done. Finished. Ready to load.

Is a wet tumbler really faster when you consider the extra PITA that goes into making sure your brass is dry enough to load?

Dry tumbling doesn't take that much time either - I'm certainly never sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to finish. I load it up, start it, walk away, and then come back to it a couple of hours later. A good vibratory tumbler with treated media does a pretty good job and it does it fairly quickly.

Different strokes for different folks I guess, but it'll take some doing to convince me that wet tumbling is superior to dry tumbling in any kind of meaningful way.

Yeah. I hit my vibrator just a few days a year.

I wait till I've got a big load I need to care of, then I take the time to get it all out of my system. Plug her in and I can just let it go to town.

All of the jokes out of the way, that is what I do. I'll "mark a day" where I am around and have a couple of minutes an hour of time all day. Then I'll just run the 200-500 cases through the vibratory tumbler with walnut media and a bit of nu shine. About an hour per load. That's a solid 2000-5000 cases in a day. It only takes a minute to get it started and maybe 2 minutes to empty, separate the media out, pour them in to a bucket or bag, and then drop the new load and the media back in and turn it back on again. Maybe half an hour, 45 minutes tops, spread over a day to get enough tumbled for a year of loading basically. Even if you shoot pretty high volume, that isn't much time commitment to clean a lot of brass.

It is nice sometimes to let it run outside with the top off to get rid of dust. Also tossing a (USED!) dryer sheet in cuts down on the dust a ton. The static from the sheet picks up the finest of the dust.

 

[outrider58]

Every range day, I take the day's brass and toss it into my two tumblers and let them run a couple hours. My tumblers are in my garage. No noise. No dust. The next day I separate from the medium and store in big plastic jars. I can fit 1K pieces of 9mm in one of these jars. I have tons of them.

I really don't understand the "tumbling takes too long" crap. Who cleans their brass right before reloading?

 

[Bafflingbs]

Every range day, I take the day's brass and toss it into my two tumblers and let them run a couple hours. My tumblers are in my garage. No noise. No dust. The next day I separate from the medium and store in big plastic jars. I can fit 1K pieces of 9mm in one of these jars. I have tons of them.

I really don't understand the "tumbling takes too long" crap. Who cleans their brass right before reloading?

View attachment 444696

Slightly off topic, but, what’s your experience with ultrasound cleaners for suppressors? Any recommendations or favorite(s) Not looking to spend a fortune

 

[outrider58]

Slightly off topic, but, what’s your experience with ultrasound cleaners for suppressors? Any recommendations or favorite(s) Not looking to spend a fortune

I've used them with mixed results. If I'm cleaning cups, I prefer tumbling in pins and soapy water. It works better. However, I just bought a bunch of CLR and want to try that in my ultrasonic cleaner.

A good tip for using ultrasonic cleaners is, put the cleaning fluid(whatever you use) into a plastic bag with the items you wan to clean. As long as the bag doesn't tear, clean-up is much easier.

 

[Bafflingbs]

I've used them with mixed results. If I'm cleaning cups, I prefer tumbling in pins and soapy water. It works better. However, I just bought a bunch of CLR and want to try that in my ultrasonic cleaner.

A good tip for using ultrasonic cleaners is, put the cleaning fluid(whatever you use) into a plastic bag with the items you wan to clean. As long as the bag doesn't tear, clean-up is much easier.

Thanks brother

 

[outrider58]

Thanks brother

You got it my friend!