Don't advise using them with an airbrush

Doug,

Ken, the owner of Badger Airbrush says the one thing that will ruin an airbrush. Ken explained it as that solder between the airbrush head and the body comes apart after using the ultrasonic cleaner. For a company that has a lifetime guarantee on their product and they say not to use a ultrasonic cleaner I'd listen and walk way. Airbrush cleaning isn't that hard and you don't need to do a full strip down every time. Run cleaner until the paint goes clear, and you're fine. Many professional airbrush artists don't clean their airbrushes like the hobby folks do. 

Craig

I have my airbrushing area

I have my airbrushing area right next to my sink. I just run water from the tap through the brush. On occasion I will run airbrush cleaner through it. 

I bought one a few years ago

and found it to be close to useless.

Falls Apart ?

I find that hard to believe. Must be a lousy solder joint for it to fall apart. The way to test that for yourself would be to solder two pieces together and see if your ultra sonic cleaner will sperate the two parts.

Bernd 

Ultrasonic cleaner

I use one  with Badger and Paasche airbrush since four or five years; nearly once a time each week.

I first buy it to clean some Pandora jewels of my lovely half.

But I see his use for Airbrush in demonstration when I still lived in Europe at the big toy fair of  Dortmund  in Germany where they are big demonstration of airbrush painter and paint dealers.

Coming back from the fair I have used the Ultrasonic cleaner to wash and clean  my different airbrush.

I never see until now any degradation of any of my different airbrush with his use

I put hem in the Ultrasonic Cleaner with a soap made of distilled water and Isopropyl alcool generally just two of three minutes, more enough to remove any paint residue.

Just never use a metal cleaner solution used to wash jewelry, since it's probable they can attack the brass parts of the airbrush

I can not say about cleaning

I can not say about cleaning a airbrush, but I have found they do work with the correct cleaners to do a deep clean on some parts that are hard to clean. (Aka: brass steam loco placed back into the foam with no plastic over it).

otherwise just a box of junk taking up space.

While i would not argue with

While i would not argue with the guy that owns the company that made most of my airbrushes…. I do wonder about that.  As jewelers use them and a lot of jewelry has solder joints in it somewhere.  

And my booth is right next to my sink.  But i live in the country on a well and my water would screw up the brush almost as fast as the paint would… 

And yes i clean it fairly easily but anything that does a better job or does as good a job easier thus making me more inclined to actually use one of the 5 or 6 airbrushes that i actually own….  In my defence there is 4 different styles and the ret i inherited…..  

-Doug M

Most Jewelry is not Chrome

Most Jewelry is not Chrome Plated it is Gold or Silver.  Not sure of the area that is the problem,  but I suspect that it is solder over chrome.   

I bought one at work, with a

I bought one at work, with a heated bath. It works well, using it to clean GR connectors, and they come out looking like new. Silver plated BNC adaptors go in with their "patina" and come out looking new. Tried a piece of nickel-silver track and the results were not exactly spectacular. But it did remove some corrosion, at the cost of a lot of time. All this with a detergent meant for pressure washers and distilled water.

Of course you get what you pay for. This is a serious unit, and one of the applications was for cleaning flux off PCBs. For that you need heat. This one has adjustable temperature and a timer, with multiple transducers to prevent standing waves in the solution.

The solution will heat up during operation, the issue with airbrushes may be a softer/lower temperature solder that could melt as a result if left in the bath for a long time.

Not sure the reason why

I'm not sure the reason why Ken tells his customers not to use a ultrasonic cleaner but I'm guessing it has something to do with the plating as well.

Honestly it takes me maybe 60 seconds to clean my gravity feed brush. Fill color cup with thinner, run a rag/q tip around the inside if the color cup to get any big chunks. Dump, refill, spray @ 30-60 psi and blow everything out. Do one or two more rinses if it's a hard color like silver, but otherwise I just pull the needle back a bit to store it and it's fine. I deep clean/strip it down maybe once every 40-50 paint jobs if I'm not getting a good paint spray and even then it's just usually the needle cap that needs cleaning.

Craig

You won't believe this

A very close friend before his passing painted custom show cars.  He had the dirtiest spray guy I have ever seen.  He said it wasn't worth the time to clean.  He would do a color change simply by changing the screw on can and purging the new color though the gun.  He cleaned it the same way by purging it with laquer thinner.  Then he just threw the whole dirty gun in a can of something and put on the lid, if he felt like it.  He told me if air could not get to it the paint left behind wouldn't harden.  I found this extremely hard to get my head around.  Many years later I had the same feeling about cleaning my airbrush.  That's right I gave his idea a try for myself.  I used an olive jar slightly larger than my airbrush and submerged the whole thing into lacquer thinner and screwed on the lid.  It actually does work, but I still occasionally take it all apart for a good cleaning.

Not sure how this might work with the acrylic water base paints of today, but for those of us that still have some Floquil that hasn't dried in the bottle, give it a try.

Airbrush and Ultrasonic cleaners

I use my ultrasonic cleaner all the time with my two Badger brushes, other than discoloring and removing the chrome plating in some places, I haven't had anything fall apart in 5 years of use.

strip paint

There's a guy on youtube who uses one to strip paint from brass engines he's repainting. Nothing mentioned about soldered-on details falling off...

There's a guy on youtube who

More about the chrome plating come off over areas that are soldered together (Dissimilar Metals or Materials),   not about parts coming unsoldered.  

As you pointed out he is using the Ultrasonic Cleaner to strip the part down to bare metal,  and they will strip plating off of materials put into them.   

Your best bet would to read and look up how ultrasonic cleaners work before just basing everything on a youtube video.

entire list of things you can put into a cleaner and what you can not can be found on manufactures websites. 

Ask the manufacture would be a lot smarter than going to a group forum on a model train web site if you want the correct information

I bought this little cleaner on Amazon the other day

Looks like the case from the “Magnasonic” ones from harbour freight.  It appears the same unit is available under many labels.  The Brand on this one says”Fosmon”. It was $44 Cdn and was shipped overnight free (prime) and arrived the next day, which I thought was rather amazing.  

Comes with a plastic basket and a watch stand so that only the watch band can be submerged.  Only problem is it’s some shade of pink/purple. Lol. Maybe I’ll scuff the sheen off, mask the control panel, and give it a coat of maroon and gray as I try out my airbrush!  I will label it the “CPR Couldron”

 

I bought it to loosen/clean loosened hardened grease on used locos.  Seems to work pretty well so far and has a variety of time length cycles ranging from 90 seconds to 30 minutes as described below.  Used warm water and a bit of dish soap.

An 18 minute cycle, some minor time with a toothbrush under warm water, and another 18 minute cycle and things got pretty clean.  I could barely turn these worm gears before cleaning, now they turn easily with zero lube applied.

This photo shows dirty water after 2 cycles.  You can see the grease starting to flow out of crevices a few seconds after the thing starts, so it definitely works.  

The Instructions say the basket absorbs up to 30% of the energy input, and need not be used unless trying to suspend fragile parts, so I just put larger parts straight into the tub, and tiny bits like screws and wipers into a wee cup filled with the solution.  Maybe at some point I’ll do parts from the other loco with the basket for comparison.  Certainly a frame I put in the basket as it is heavier and seemed to buzz against the stainless interior if the basket was not used. 

Below, a before and after of two drive towers.  One cleaned, one not as yet. The one on the left was even dirtier before I started - even the worm gear was caked full of hardened grease and an X-Acto blade was needed to pry it loose.
No wonder the motor could barely turn them, neither could my full scale fingers. 
Hard to say if this is factory original lube, or owner applied but the wee cleaner renders it “gone!”

 
Maybe some day I’ll spring for one of the larger industrial heated models that will take a whole frame, but for now, this will do.  I can get a bit over half of an HO frame in on an angle, so am trying to  clean one of those in two swipes and see how it does on mold.

Baths

If you are going to get an ultrasonic cleaner, be sure it comes with a basket, or that one is available for it. The items to be cleaned should not be on the floor of the basin, they should be suspended in the solvent with a basket.

Water with an appropriate detergent makes a great solvent. I stuff I use is for power washers, purchased at Home Depot!

A heated bath is always good!

  "Not sure how this might

When my air brush gets too dirty I submerge it in ammonia household cleaner for a couple of minutes then flush it out with water. This takes off any of the acrylic paints I've used.   As for ultrasonic cleaners I've never tried them on models but they used to clean drafting pen tips with them where I worked. I never got into the details of how the cleaners worked as I used pencils for my survey notes :> ) .....DaveB

Baskets

The basket in the picture is plastic, which is going to absorb some of the energy and the openings are rather small, so more energy will be lost. Baskets made of metal with a wire mesh bottom let a lot more energy pass.

One reason for using the basket is to avoid damage to the transducers.

The one I have at work isn't big enough for a loco body, let alone a turnout. Thinking back, I should have ordered one large enough to hold a Q-Jet... Then it could have a few more applications.