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Just don't ;-)

Tried it on a converted guardsman. Catachan with sculpted beret, pack, weapon straps etc. He'd been soaking in Fairy Power Spray for a week or two because I forgot about him. Bought an ultrasonic cleaner for skate bearing cleaning, and thought "Hmmmm."

Chucked him in with some warm water. All the GS shook away, and most of the paint stayed on. Haha, total fail! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Your experiences are completely the opposite of mine.

Most likely it's the fact that you bought one which is heavier duty than the one I own; which is made for cleaning jewelry, eyeglasses, and other small objects.

The ultrasonic cleaner isn't going to just vibrate the paint off by itself. It needs a cleaning agent.
There are certain things you cannot clean (which the cleaners instruction manual warns you of).

I've been using an ultrasonic cleaner on plastic, metal, and resin miniatures for over 5 years now and I haven't had any problems.

What is fairy powder for again?

Iv used simple green in a sonic cleaner with 0 problems.

doesn't touch green stuff or anything.

It might be that your striping agent weakens plastics/greenstuff if you soak it tooo long. because IIRC you should only spray and leave on fairy poweder for like a few minutes not days.

It wasn't the end of the world, kinda made me laugh. Yes, I may have oversoaked, but it was all in one piece til the shakey shakey magic happened. It is just a cheapo jewlry one. Ah well, GS time again!

(And yes, I know the cleaner needs an agent if used from a standing start, I did mention I cleaned skate bearings with it...)

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It wasn't the end of the world, kinda made me laugh. Yes, I may have oversoaked, but it was all in one piece til the shakey shakey magic happened. It is just a cheapo jewlry one. Ah well, GS time again!

(And yes, I know the cleaner needs an agent if used from a standing start, I did mention I cleaned skate bearings with it...)

No, what you said was that it was a "skate bearing cleaner".

There's a significant difference. As for the green stuff coming off?
Yeah. That's all your own fault. Leaving it to soak for that long, in anything, will likely weaken the green stuff to the point it will come off.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
(And yes, I know the cleaner needs an agent if used from a standing start, I did mention I cleaned skate bearings with it...)

No, what you said was that it was a "skate bearing cleaner".

Nope, I didn't, if you read the OP you'll see I didn't use those words. ;-) It's an ultrasonic cleaner. I bought it for cleaning skate bearings, but it was designed for jewelry. I used it on minis and gakked up. Relax, it was a lighthearted thread and I acknowledged my errors!

If you have any tips on how to work better as a technique next time I'd love to hear them. If you just want to argue over words used and semantics then it's not gonna contribute much to the thread or the board in general! Seriously, would love to know how to make it work as it would save me a lot of toothbrush time if there's a system that works.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
(And yes, I know the cleaner needs an agent if used from a standing start, I did mention I cleaned skate bearings with it...)

No, what you said was that it was a "skate bearing cleaner".

Nope, I didn't, if you read the OP you'll see I didn't use those words. ;-) It's an ultrasonic cleaner. I bought it for cleaning skate bearings, but it was designed for jewelry. I used it on minis and gakked up. Relax, it was a lighthearted thread and I acknowledged my errors!

If you have any tips on how to work better as a technique next time I'd love to hear them. If you just want to argue over words used and semantics then it's not gonna contribute much to the thread or the board in general! Seriously, would love to know how to make it work as it would save me a lot of toothbrush time if there's a system that works.

I'm not arguing over semantics.
The way I read it was that you bought one designed for skate bearings, not jewelry. Because you said nothing about it being designed for jewelry until later.


But really, if you want to know how to make an ultrasonic cleaner work?
Put undiluted Fairy Power Cleaner into the cleaner, filling it to the minimum fill line that you're supposed to use.
Let the model soak for a bit(usually an hour or two is good to let it start "prepping") and then run the cleaner in cycles of 15-20 minutes. 15-20 minutes on; then off; then on again until everything is clean.
If you have the option for a "heated cleaner", that is preferable in many cases but watch yourself because I'm not sure how heated Fairy Power will interact with the models themselves.
I run Simple Green undiluted in my cleaner and it works great. The only thing is that with metals and some plastics, I can run it heated (which is usually preferable as it works better) but with resin and smaller finnicky plastic bits they can bend and lose their rigidity because the Simple Green gets that hot.
I got a second degree burn the first time I had done that and stuck my hand in without thinking because the pewter model had gotten that hot.

Ouch. Not ideal!!!