Ultrasonic Token Cleaner

[copperglobe]

Anyone ever used one of these, or similar, to clean those dirty tokens that we use at the wash? Results? What cleaner solution?

http://www.harborfreight.com/25-liter-ultrasonic-cleaner-95563.html

 

[MEP001]

If I felt the need to clean tokens, I'd put them in a 5-gallon pail and spray them with high-pressure in a bay. Whatever doesn't get cleaned off from that certainly won't come off in an ultrasonic cleaner.

You might be expecting the ultrasonic cleaner to polish the tokens to look like new - it won't.

 

[mjc3333]

You may want to use a rock tumbler instead. Harbour freight also sells them.

 

[MEP001]

I doubt the results would be what you'd expect with a rock tumbler either - I doubt anything but a vibrating polisher with ceramic abrasives would do it.

 

[GoBuckeyes]

If you have any sizable amount of tokens to clean you'll need a large tumbler. We use a cheap cement mixer from harbor freight. We'll tumble a 1000 tokens over night with rice. You can make a shaker board to remove the tokens from the rice and re-use it several times. The more worn the rice, the longer it takes to clean the next batch. The tokens look like a million bucks compared to when they were dirty. Just don't expect them to look brand new. Any polished mirror like surface that they had when new will have a slight finish to it.

 

[mjc3333]

You may want to use a rock tumbler instead. Harbor freight also sells them.

MEP is right, I forgot to add you would need some form of abrasive material that would not ruin the tokens themselves to actually 'clean' them.

Rice would work in a cement mixer for decent results.

 

[Keith Baker]

I have used a paint mixer to clean tokens before. Fill a gallon paint can about 2/3 full and top it off with hot soapy water. Let it shake for about 20 minutes and the tokens will be cleaned. Just rinse them in a sink.

All of the cleaning methods using friction will take off the finish of the tokens and make them look duller no matter how clean they are. I have also cleaned them in a bucket with high pressure wash water. This is kind of messy and time consuming though.

Keith

 

[scout]

We have brass tokens---same as bullet cases---go to gun store and get corn cob or shell media -we use a shell with Rouge added that cabela,s sells and unit that tumbles it all for 24 hours+- and you will see the brightest tokens you can imagine--think newly minted gold dollars---customers will react to them---