So removing the paint from Eldar models has been a bit of a challenge as there are a lot of very small details parts which like the race are a bit fragile, so after a bunch of internet research I'd thought I try out an Ultrasonic clean as I want to go back and redo some of my older stuff.
So, first up I'm using a cheap china version (under $100 AUD) not the sort of thing a dentist uses, I'm sure you'd get different results with one of those bad boys, but they cost about as much as a used car.
So there are a bunch of different sizes, the really cheap things are rather small and only good for infantry, the cost to get something larger isn't that great, so I went for a 2L that could fit a wave serpent, just double check the dimension as they are not all the same shape.
So after hours of testing here is what I've found so far.
Does it work? - Yes, but with a bunch of fine print lol. Not any where near as good as YouTube suggests.
As the unit works it heats the liquid, the manual suggests running it at 40-60 deg C for optimal clean, which works out to be about a 30 min run. Max run time on this unit is 99 minutes thanks to the timer, but the book says not to go over an hour, I don't particularly want to cook the plastic lol.
I suspect fine cast may not take to the heat too well, so I have not tried it. Thing forgeworld resin should in theory be OK as it usually takes a few minutes in boiling water before it warps, but my shadow spectres are one of the units I want to redo.
Paint removal - it will have an impact on citadel style paints, some spray paints and primers it has minimal effect on still. Dropped in some used guardians and the stuff that wasn't under coated came off fairly easily once I had enough Simple green in the mix, the stuff that was undercoated with who knows what, would only be removed after a scrub, but even then it was just the edges. A used Wave was effectively undercoated in some gold spray, it wouldn't come off, but everything on top of it did come off.
How long does it take - using just water like the instructions suggest does nothing, or just takes way to long. I only had the ready to use simple green spray, but a 30/70 mix of that on 30 mins, is enough to start stripping paint easily with a tooth brush, less effort than scrubbing it after an overnight soak.
30 minutes is not really long enough for infantry models, some chunks will come off the larger area's but still too much scrubbing for my liking to get into the detail. I've only just start messing around with them, so I haven't found the sweet spot yet.
Effects on glue - again youtube suggest it just magically breaks apart, well not really. I've currently got a mix of standard super glued and plastic glued (Revell Contacta Professional) stuff being cleaned. Super glue it weakens, but again it take a while and if someone has used half a tube its going to take a loooong time. So far the exterior parts of the wave have come off with a little pressure after an hour, the internal part that has half of then engine is still stuck on (super glue was used).
It doesn't seem to have effected the plastic glue as yet, but still early.
Has anyone else here used ultra sonic cleaners?