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TruthTellers · December 14, 2018, 12:17 PM

I bought a Hornady ultrasonic about two years ago and I'm going to go be buying Harbor Freight's dual drum rotary tumbler today. An ultrasonic is a nice piece of equipment to have, it cleans metal parts well, but brass isn't an ultrasonic's bread and butter. It can clean brass, but it can't make it look brand new like wet tumbling does.

I do think it's better than a vibratory tumbler tho, I really don't see the point in a vibratory tumbler other than it's the cheapest option for doing large batches of brass. An ultrasonic is a no dust and less mess solution and it takes 20-30 minutes to do a batch of say 100 rounds of brass. 2-5 minutes is NOT enough time to do any brass cleaning in an ultrasonic.

The extremely large ultrasonics, the ones you can put an AR upper into... I'm sure they're powerful, but the price is too high for what they are as a brass cleaner. If you're shooting in matches and competitions every week and want the cleanest AR possible, then they'd work, but if you're not that type of sport shooter, it's not worth getting one of those.

December 14, 2018, 12:17 PM	#4
TruthTellers Senior Member Join Date: October 22, 2016 Posts: 3,887	I bought a Hornady ultrasonic about two years ago and I'm going to go be buying Harbor Freight's dual drum rotary tumbler today. An ultrasonic is a nice piece of equipment to have, it cleans metal parts well, but brass isn't an ultrasonic's bread and butter. It can clean brass, but it can't make it look brand new like wet tumbling does. I do think it's better than a vibratory tumbler tho, I really don't see the point in a vibratory tumbler other than it's the cheapest option for doing large batches of brass. An ultrasonic is a no dust and less mess solution and it takes 20-30 minutes to do a batch of say 100 rounds of brass. 2-5 minutes is NOT enough time to do any brass cleaning in an ultrasonic. The extremely large ultrasonics, the ones you can put an AR upper into... I'm sure they're powerful, but the price is too high for what they are as a brass cleaner. If you're shooting in matches and competitions every week and want the cleanest AR possible, then they'd work, but if you're not that type of sport shooter, it's not worth getting one of those. __________________ "We always think there's gonna be more time... then it runs out."