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jewelry cleaners
Does anyone have any experience with ultrasonic jewelry cleaners that just
use tap water? I'd love to be good the environment and not use chemicals if I can. But I don't want to buy something that doesn't work and end up tossing into a landfill. Any advice would be appreciated. -- "Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others." Postel's Law: |
#2
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jewelry cleaners
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:06:09 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Triple"
wrote: Does anyone have any experience with ultrasonic jewelry cleaners that just use tap water? I'd love to be good the environment and not use chemicals if I can. But I don't want to buy something that doesn't work and end up tossing into a landfill. Any advice would be appreciated. Ultrasonic cleaners may vary from brand to brand in their power levels, their various convenience features, and to a degree, in the exact frequency they operate at. But they are basically all the same type of action, so the nature of use of one, will be about the same as for others, even if some are faster or more aggresive than others. And in essence, they are scrub brushes. They work by causing the formation and collapse of myriads of tiny bubbles of water vapor (an effect called cavitation), with the formation and collapse of the bubbles occuring at very high speeds. That creates a scrubbing action. Whether that action has any effect, however, depends on the fluid. The fluid must be able to transmit the ultrasonic sound energy for the cavitation to occur efficiently. And then, the degree to which the scrubbing cleans something depends on how well the fluid interacts with the contaminant. Generally, some degree of soluability or for the contaminant to be "wetted" or broken up by the fluid is needed for much of anything to happen. That often means some sort of detergent action. This is no different from anything else you clean. If you're trying to clean up sugar or salt crystals, then plain water will do just fine, as it will do for anything else that is water soluable. If you've got grease, though, then you can scrub with plain water all you like, but it won't come clean without some surfactant or detergent action. Most of the time, when cleaning jewelry, you're trying to remove a mix of oils, soaps, dead skin, lotions, and whatever other gunks may have packed into the jewelry over time. Usually this needs some sort of cleaning agent beyond just water. However, there are many cleaning agents around which are properly formulated to be environmentally friendly. Simple green, for example, is a general purpose cleaning agent sold for household cleaning. It works fine in an ultrasonic cleaner. Maybe not quite as fast as some of the commercial cleaners, but well enough. Adding just a little ammonia is also probably not a big no-no environmentally, and will help considerably. Try to avoid cleaning agents (like soap) that form suds. That will get in the way in an ultrasonic, but other than that, there are many environmentally friendly cleaning agents you can use. You don't need to use nasty stuff. In fact, some of the commercially made ultrasonic cleaning solutions are also made to be fully biodegradable and are completely harmless in the waste water stream. Just because it's something more than plain water does not mean it has to be harmful or to be avoided. Remember that the word "chemical" is just that, a word. Being able to call something a chemical has no environmental meaning. Water, for example, is dihydrogen monoxide, if you like. Sounds pretty nasty to be putting into the environment, doesn't it. And some of the totally naturally occuring things that not only are, but should be, in a normal bit of healthy pond water will have chemical names that are truly unpronouncable. Again, don't let the chemical nomenclature frighten you. Simply look for products that honestly can claim to be environmentally friendly, and you'll be fine. No doubt you already have some such products around the house. Peter |
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jewelry cleaners
In article , "Peter W.. Rowe,"
wrote: Simply look for products that honestly can claim to be environmentally friendly, and you'll be fine. No doubt you already have some such products around the house. Peter Well said, Peter! The same applies to the word "organic." Just becuase anything is labelled "organic" does NOT mean it is necessarily better for the environment or better for you.It all depends what "chemicals" are present. Whether they are naturally formed substances or introduced into the product by the supplier, does not matter. It is the nature of the "chemical" that determines whether it is good for you or for the environment, or not. G.H.Ireland. -- _ _________________________________________ / \._._ |_ _ _ /' Orpheus Internet Services \_/| |_)| |(/_|_|_ / 'Internet for Everyone' _______ | ___________./ http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk |
#4
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jewelry cleaners
In the magical world of this newsgroup called rec.crafts.jewelry on
Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:06:09 -0700 we were all amazed to see "Triple" write: Does anyone have any experience with ultrasonic jewelry cleaners that just use tap water? I'd love to be good the environment and not use chemicals if I can. But I don't want to buy something that doesn't work and end up tossing into a landfill. Any advice would be appreciated. I used to use ammonia, a naturally occurring gas, in my ultra, but customers bitched that it stank. One day I ran out and, having nothing else, used some ZEP industrial strength floor stripper. It worked so unbelievably well I bought a whole gallon of it and now use it exclusively. BTW, I took a sacrificial pearl and soaked it in the undiluted ZEP for a month. No change. And I steamed it afterwards and no nacre flew off. |
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