What to Look For in Ultrasonic Cleaners

High-quality ultrasonic cleaner machines differ greatly from low-quality “off-the-shelf” ultrasonic cleaners. To offer the lowest prices, these manufacturers often sacrificed quality. Many end users don’t understand or recognize these sacrifices in quality, so they purchase the low-priced ultrasonic tank thinking it is the same as a China.-made ultrasonic parts washer or ultrasonic cleaning tank. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s look at a few of these sacrifices:

1. Piezoelectric crystal transducers can vary greatly in quality. Due to the nature of the crystalline formation, transducers will naturally decay over time (3-6 years typically) in their ability to convert electrical energy to mechanical/sound energy. Inexpensive, lower-quality transducers will decay much faster than those made with higher-quality crystals. This degradation or decay will greatly change the cleaning quality of an ultrasonic machine. Inexpensive ultrasonic washers which seem to perform well when new can often show decreased cleaning quality in as little as 3-6 months.

2. Ultrasonic generators may be made from electrical components that lack the longevity an end user expects. Combined with accelerated piezoelectric transducer decay, these low-quality ultrasonic generator components can lead to extreme variations of ultrasonic parts cleaner performance over time. This cleaning variation in turn leads to more scrapped and reworked parts. This represents not only a major cost problem for a business, but also can cause the process to fail validation protocols and specifications in medical device, aerospace, and other fields.

3. Low-powered ultrasonic transducers can significantly reduce the cost of an ultrasonic cleaning machine, but this sacrifice can also reduce cleaning effectiveness. Low-powered transducers in an ultrasonic bath cleaner can also compromise the ability to cavitate a solution evenly.

4. Tank thickness matters. Frequent application of ultrasonic energy to a tank causes tank erosion over time, and can erode through the bottom of the tank. Signs of ultrasonic wash tank erosion include a gray appearance in stainless steel, and pits in the bottom of the tank. Low-quality sonic cleaners use a thinner gauge of stainless steel that can show wear in a matter of months.