Mini ultrasonic cleaners

[esoxlucius]

Firstly, wow! I hadn't been on Bike Radar for a while, tried to log in for advice, and discovered it's gone!! Good to see this new community has popped up.

We use huge ultrasonic cleaners at work and I had a brainwave that a mini one would be great for cleaning bike chains. It turns out it wasn't such a revolutionary idea after all as this really is a thing, it seems lots of cyclists use them.

There are loads of mini ones online. My question is, does anyone have any links to the best ones? What's the minimum size you can get away with that just fits a chain in nicely?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[si_c]

I used a small jewelers one for ages, about 1L capacity, need to run it through a few times as they're not particularly powerful, but a squirt of washing up liquid and some warm to hot water worked wonders. Got it from Amazon about 8 years ago for around £35ish I think but I recently upgraded to a much larger model as I wanted to be easily able to clean larger parts as well, but the old one still works fine.

Below a certain price point I think they are all much the same, pick one which has the capacity you need and which looks as though it won't be offensive aesthetically!

 

[Big John]

We've got a small one at the bike charity where I work. It was donated, would you believe. It holds things like a rear mech, couple of chains, front mech s and basically anything that'll fit in the small 'chip basket'. We used it a lot when we first had it but it doesn't seem to get used much these days, no idea why. They work well but my guess is the volunteers just can't be bothered. i thought about having one at home but I clean my bikes after every ride so nothing is that bad it needs an ultrasonic cleaner so I decided against it.

 

[richardfm]

Firstly, wow! I hadn't been on Bike Radar for a while, tried to log in for advice, and discovered it's gone!! Good to see this new community has popped up.

We use huge ultrasonic cleaners at work and I had a brainwave that a mini one would be great for cleaning bike chains. It turns out it wasn't such a revolutionary idea after all as this really is a thing, it seems lots of cyclists use them.

There are loads of mini ones online. My question is, does anyone have any links to the best ones? What's the minimum size you can get away with that just fits a chain in nicely?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I suppose "new" is a subjective term, but CycleChat is at least 18 years old.
I use a jewellers ultrasonic cleaner that I got used on eBay. It does chains and other small components; and watches, rings and glasses.

 

[super_davo]

There are loads of 0.6 litre ones designed for jewelry, glasses etc. that cost around the £20 mark that you can get on eBay, Amazon, Aliexpress - I've even seen in Aldi special buys. They will fit a chain, but doubt you'll be able to get much else in there, as much because of shape as size.

They don't have a heating element unlike bigger ones so helps to heat the water in a kettle first but nowhere near boiling. You might need to flush through a couple of times but using one and some degreaser, you can get a chain clean enough to be ready for waxing, which is the main reason people tend to look at ultrasonic cleaners

Eventually I got a large (3L) one with a heater and more powerful waves which can do cassettes & other components but they are much more, starting around the £70 mark. Now I have it I've used it for all sorts of things round the house... door handles, bits of the oven and hobs, shower heads...

 

[si_c]

shower heads...

Dammit. Never thought of that.