Tried a cheap ultrasonic cleaner on some injector nozzles and it wrecked two of them

I grabbed a $60 cleaner from Harbor Freight last week thinking it would save time cleaning some old PT6 fuel nozzles. Ran it for 10 minutes with standard solution and two of them came out with visible pitting on the orifices. Learned the hard way that not all ultrasonics are fine enough for aviation work especially on critical parts. Anyone else run into this with budget shop gear?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila_mitchell4d ago

I read somewhere that cheap ultrasonic cleaners often use lower frequency transducers that can't break down fine contaminants. Instead they just rattle the hell out of the part. Saw a post on a machining board where a guy tested like six different budget units with a decibel meter. Found the cheap ones were actually cavitating too violently. That's the pitting you saw. Ten minutes is way too long for nozzle orifices with that kind of machine. You want something in the 40kHz range minimum for precision parts. That Harbor Freight unit is probably 25kHz at best.

anthony_fox903d ago

Yeah I did the exact same thing and now my wallet's got more pitting than those nozzles lol.