I have a James Products Ultra 7000 ultrasonic cleaner which I’m told was the most popular one in the UK. I don’t think it’s available now. It cost around £35.00 when I bought it maybe ten years ago.
I use it with water and a German cleaning solution that comes highly recommended. To be honest, I don’t find it all that useful and I don’t use it much. I would rather use fine brushes and cotton buds to clean the feed and section. I wonder if it actually achieves any more than a quick soak with cleaning fluid would do. Where it is more useful is with oxidation and rust remover on the odd occasion that I come across an accommodation clip with a little rust. Again, it’s possible that it is the rust remover rather than the ultrasonic process that does the job.
My cleaner might be more useful if it could be set to run for longer periods but the maximum, so far as I remember, is five minutes, then you have to re-set the thing. From past experience I can say that five minutes does not make much impression on a nib and section unit that is thoroughly clogged with old ink. Perhaps a 30 minute setting would be more effective and convenient.
The larger ones used for carburettor cleaning certainly do a very good job but they are quite expensive and have a large footprint. Honestly I’m not at all sure that these small ultrasonic cleaners are really a necessary part of the restorer’s toolkit.
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You just saved me money and a bad feeling🥰 Thank you so much for your honesty; Have a Happy New Year🖋📖🎨🥳
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Hey Deb. I teetered on the edge of thinking about seriously researching one .
There’s some considerable anecdotal evidence that they are pretty good …..
However,I’ve not had the real need for one in all the pens I’ve played with either !
so it might have ended up For sale 🤷♂️
Hmmm, maybe the Emporer really has no clothes on….
People I know and respect in the business get much more benefit that I do from ultrasonics. What can I say? Perhaps it’s just the way I work.
I don’t use these things, so if I’m asking a silly question…. But I can see that one advantage to the cleaners would be batch processing: throwing a bunch of parts into the solution and letting it run while you work on something else.
It’s not a silly question but it depends how you work. I restore one pen at a time, beginning to end, so I never have a collection of parts in need of cleaning. Another thing is that the maximum setting is five minutes. Most things need more than that so I would be interrupted every five minutes. That interferes with a person’s concentration.
I bought an old Parker Victory that needed a new sac and a good clean. I let it soak for a week, nothing could come out of the nib+ feed. I bought a cleaning solution and let it soak for another week, nothing. I bought an ultrasonic cleaner and in 5 minutes a cloud of muck was released in the container. The nib+feed were free and ready to work again after years. I now, periodically, clean my sections in the ultrasonic cleaner. HTH
Hi Marco,
In a straightforward pen like the Victory I would simply disassemble and use brushes and water on the feed and section. Each to his own. Whatever works. I never soak anything.
But in order to disassemble the nib and feed you need the Knck block, IMO. I still don’t have this tool. I have devised a tool that allows me to flush with as much water as I want a section and this neither managed to get anything out of the section. So Ultrasonic it was 🙂
This is it. It takes time and money to build up all the tools.