tea balls for parts holder

[cteno4]

so i use my little ultrasonic bath a fair amount with small parts like gears and truck parts, etc. Keeping the small parts from getting lost is tough. I have used small plastic condiment containers with clear lids (think soy sauce containers from takeaway sushi) in the past and put my desired cleaning fluid in there and then float these in the ultrasonic bath with water. while this works and saves on filling the whole bath with cleaning solution, you only get a partial transfer of the ultrasonic waves into the mini container bath. 

 

the other approach is to just plunk your parts into the bath directly to get all the full goodness of the ultrasonic waves, but with tiny parts this is not easy to fish them out again. 

 

tea balls turn out to be a great solution to allow most all the sonic waves to get in there to clean but allow easy containment of parts and easy to just put under the water and rinse. also can use something like a water pick if you really want to pressure blast them in the bottom of the tea ball.

 

then you can take your heat gun or hair dryer and blast the ball to dry everything off quickly w/o loosing your parts.

 

These little flat bottom ones are perfect for the task at about a buck.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/351424354346?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

cheers

 

jeff

Edited May 11, 2017 by cteno4