Sort of DIY Ultrasonic cleaner for LP's

[Pelliott321]

after a demo of how well theses things clean LP and not wanting to spend $1500 or more I decided to assemble one since the price of the tanks have come down so much recently.
I paid $146 with shipping from Ca. another $100 for motor/controller, bits of aluminum from Home Depot. I still have the filter to add, just need one more coupling to get it together. So my total investment so far is about $250

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[ratbagp]

What size tank did you use?

ray

[SoundMods]

I have had the privilege of using a multi-disc ultra-sonic cleaner.

I've attached a white paper that gives advice on its use and the contents of a solution that gets the job done.

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ULTRASONIC RECORD CLEANER Rev 1.pdf

(29.06 KiB) Downloaded 665 times

[Pelliott321]

Its a 10 litter.
The spacers I am using are just 1/2 inch which may be a bit too small. 3/4 to an inch seems to be what most use but I was trying on this first version to go as cheap and easy as I could and the nylon spacers were very cheap.
There are more versions for the cleaning solution than one cares to read, but most are various ratios of distilled water, isopropyl alcohol, and photo-flo

[tomp]

If anyone needs Photo-Flo I have just under a pint. A little goes a long way.

Tom

[Pelliott321]

Interesting thing about Photo-flo is that it comes in two concentrations.
There is a Photo-flo 600 and the more common Photo-flo 200 and when you read about recipes rarely is the concentration mentioned

[tomp]

I have the 200.

Tom

[SoundMods]

That's a good point. I use Photoflo 200 and I was lucky to find it.

[Pelliott321]

Further research I found Photo-600 is a working solution and the 200 is the concentrate.
I added the pump and filter. I will probably be flamed for the filter. My goal was to hold cost down and I already had the filter canister on the shelf. I can get a pair of 5 micron filters for less than $10 at home depot. I use them for my whole house filter system so they were on the shelf also.
What the commercial guys use is an aquarium filter that cost between $100 to $180 depending on the number of filter stages and GPH. I could not find any specs on how fine the aquarium filter was, just marketing goop. My $20 pump claims 225 GHP, I believe I am getting a refresh in less than 3 mins. I am setting the temperature to 37C which is 68F, a throwback to my darkroom days.

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[SoundMods]

Hmmm. I found a nice 2-stage aquarium filter for under $50. I try to keep the solids at a minimum by wiping the used records first.

If I learned anything -- I found that even the most pristine used records can have groove damage that is not observable.

I had one nice jazz recording, that when it got closer to the label it sounded like someone used a finishing nail for a stylus.

OH Well! One dog out of a half-dozen records isn't too bad.