Cheap ultrasonic cleaner ate my shutter blades, $85 gone

Picked up a no-name ultrasonic cleaner off Amazon for $85 to strip old grease off a shutter assembly. Ran it for 10 minutes in the included solution, which I now think was way too aggressive for brass blades. When I pulled the shutter out, the blades had pitting and a hazy film that no amount of swabbing would fix. Had to source a donor shutter from a parts body for $40. Anyone else had a cleaner damage delicate parts, or is there a safe solution ratio for this kind of job?

1 comments

1 Comment

jenny_coleman5d ago

Wait, nobody has pointed out that the timer might be the real culprit here. Those cheap units often have timers that run way longer than they claim, so your 10 minutes could have been 15 or 20. I've seen people clock theirs with a stopwatch and it's off by a lot. Maybe the solution wasn't the problem, it was just the exposure time that did it in. If you ever try again, run it in short bursts of like 2 minutes and check the blades between each cycle. Also, a little dish soap and water works way better than those mystery chemicals they bundle with the machine.