I spent a lot of time researching ultrasonic cleaners so that I could clean my wife's jewelry. I discovered that may gemstones can be easily damaged by ultrasound including softer gemstones such as opals, lapis lazuli, emeralds, turquoise and organic jewelry such as pearls, coral pieces, and amber.
The unit I settled on has the following key features:
Frequency Sweeping Mode: the ultrasonic frequency is constantly changed to eliminate the dead spots (i.e., poor cavitation) found on single-frequency units. This improves cleaning.
Degassing Mode: should be used be used for five minutes each time a fresh cleaning solution is used. The degas mode pulses the ultrasonic power on and off. During the on phase air bubbles form and coalesce, and during the off phase they rise to the surface and burst. Air bubbles cushion the effect of the ultrasonic pulses and removing them results in improved cleaning efficiency.
Heater: 80-degree Celsius heater
“How many husbands would do this level of research? Not many... I think that I should be named husband of the year.”
In any event, when I was setting up the machine to clean my wife's jewelry I had an epiphany... I could use the machine to clean parts for the car. Luckily the tank is large enough to fit the uprights as can be seen in the picture below. It's almost like I planned it that way. LOL
So I took the opportunity to clean the uprights and bolts. The factory assembled them using anti-seize. I am going to apply anti-seize as well and while I highly doubt there would be some type of negative interaction between two different anti-seize products, I figured it couldn't hurt to clean the parts. You need to be careful with aluminum as some cleaners will damage it. After doing some research I selected Simple Green Extreme Aircraft and Precision Cleaner. Note that this is NOT Simple Green which will damage aluminum.
A trick is to fill the tank with water and put the cleaning solution and small pieces in a beaker or glass jar. This allegedly doesn't affect the ultrasonic waves and it saves a lot of cleaning solution given that you must fill the tank nearly to the top to clean anything no matter how small.