Question:
Water Vibrators
One price I got from a shop(for overhaul) said that they also put the sax body and keys in a water bath and the machine vibrates the water, they said it was a machine that NASA came up with. I seen a sax that had just come out from the machine and it look like it had a silver polish put to it and I didn,t care to have my horn put through this. Has anyone had this done to there horn?

Answer:
Sounds like an ultra-sonic bath. I think there was a thread about them a while ago. A search might turn it up.

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It doesn't change the horns finish. It just cleans the instrument. It is a new way of doing chem cleans, that cost more to set up, but is less work for the tech., and they do a good job. It is really cool for the tech., and can be used as some extra snake oil for the sale.

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A few years ago, I bought a beater Buescher TT alto off of eBay. Had it overhauled and part of that process was a total cleaning of the body, neck and keywork (no altering of the tarnished and gummy silver finish, though).
WOW! What a difference that made. I don't know how it was cleaned, but it sure is an eye-catcher now - and plays well, too. I'm inclined to think the process discussed above probably would not be detrimental to the horn. DAVE

Answer:
It could also be a vibratory polishing machine.
The parts are put in a vibrating tank, along with some type of mildly abrasive medium such as crushed walnut shells, or tine balls, together with an abrasive powder. The result is a very well polished instrument. I do not know enough about this process to know whether water is also used.
"they said it was a machine that NASA came up with."
What hype! Even if it is true, consider all the utter disasters that NASA has been involved with!
Whether it be what I have described, or ultrasonic cleaning, it has been around for quite some time, and is frequently used in industry.
Both are very successful with instruments. However I have some reservations about what the long-term effects of REGULAR use of ultrasonic cleaning. An ultrasonic cleaner is capable of quickly punching holes through aluminium foil. They have also been demonstrated to compromise the hard surfaces of fixed dental appliances (making a better surface for bacteria to populate). I suggest that they are probably capable of microscopically damaging the structure of the surface of brass, making corrosion occur more quickly in the future. (The chemical baths that technicians use may be just as damaging in that they may significantly attack the zinc component of the brass.) It would need a specialist metallurgist, independent of sales interests, to provide valid comments about these processes. The only person in this forum who seemed to be such a specialist was predictably 'rubbished' in this forum. Suppliers of ultrasonic equipment, of course, claim that these issues have been controlled by attention to certain parameters such as the frequency, amplitude, and pulsing of the ultrasonic waves. I rather suspect they have only reduced the problems. It is understandably a pretty touchy subject with suppliers.
I am glad that in my country the preoccupation is largely with function of instruments rather than appearance.

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Most tumblers used in shops here in the states are much to small to hold an entire instrument. We have 2 in the shop, one runs wet with a diamond shaped stone media, and the other runs dry with corn husk
.

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I'm familiar with ammunition reloaders tumbling their brass in some sort of gritty media to clean and polish it, but was not aware that musical instruments would be subjected to the same process. I suppose the process described above by saxdaddy could be used on small, corroded horn parts, but subjecting the whole horn and its collective parts to that process would worry me. Admittedly, I am not a technician and will defer to others more knowledgeable; e.g., Gordon, et al.
The original post described a sort of "ultrasonic" water bath (I know, I paraphrased that, but water was the media mentioned, not some gritty material), and that's why I surmised it probably would be okay for an instrument in the cleaning stage.
As far as playability over appearance - of course. But as long as a horn is apart for the overhaul, why NOT make it look nice too? Just like my cars and my guns, I prefer my instruments to look good. DAVE

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As far as I have seen only keys get tumbled, and the tumblers are the same kind as you would use for shells. They are also only large enough for flute and clarinet keys, sax keys are to big.
Ulktasonic cleaning while somewhat new for the band instrument repair industry, has a positive buzz so far,but it doesn't make the horn look nice, it just cleans it.

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Saxdaddy: I recall maybe 30 years ago, we had ultrasonic cleaners filled with Hoppe's #9 solvent (oh how I love that smell - I wanted to use it for aftershave!!) in the station houses for officers to clean their pistols. The ultrasonic cleaners worked great at removing lead and powder residue, but if the cleaning liquid was not replaced regularly, the liquid became gummy as did the inside of the revolvers. It didn't take too much of that to render a good S&W revolver useless (gumming up the interior mechanisms).
I suppose techs who use ultrasonics now know this necessary part of maintaining the system - or is it a non-issue with water-based systems? DAVE

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As far as I know, water-based solvents are used. Health & safety issues concerning vapours are too much of a problem with other solutions.
I have not heared of a technician immersing a saxophone without disassembling it first.

Answer:
Originally Posted by Gordon (NZ) I suggest that they are probably capable of microscopically damaging the structure of the surface of brass, making corrosion occur more quickly in the future.
I worked in a Dental office which utilised this type of cleaning, in addition to an autoclave.
(The water vibrator came first)
I didn't notice any pitting nor any types of corrosion on his dental instruments at all. However, they may have been too small to notice.
(As for the bacteria, the autoclave would've gotten 'em, :P)

Answer:
Ultrasonic cleaners
We use an ultrasonic cleaner at our shop. It is large enough to immerse a baritone sax or a tuba. The instrument is not "tumbled" and there is no possibility of physical damage like dents. It is by far the safest and most effective cleaning method we have ever used. The cleaning solution is so gentile that we can use it on aluminum valve stems that would be destroyed by a dilute acid bath that is used by many shops.
It cleans green verdigris, slime, and cruddy deposits very well. It does not polish the brass. Lacquer is not affected unless it is already flaking off. Most horns are clean in 3 minutes, although some take longer.
Advantages:
Safe, non-invasive cleaning of instruments
Environmentally friendly
Safer for repairmen than muriatic acid, chromic acid, and their substitutes
Fast - cleans up to 6 instruments in 3 minutes
Disadvantages:
Instruments must be disassembled as with any other cleaning method
Cost - $15,000, and we had to cut a hole in the wall to get it in

Answer:
Hey saxtek, I was told that they will also free frozen keys, is there any truth to that?

Answer:
Originally Posted by Kareeser Originally Posted by Gordon (NZ) I suggest that they are probably capable of microscopically damaging the structure of the surface of brass, making corrosion occur more quickly in the future.
I worked in a Dental office which utilised this type of cleaning, in addition to an autoclave.....I didn't notice any pitting nor any types of corrosion on his dental instruments at all. However, they may have been too small to notice. (As for the bacteria, the autoclave would've gotten 'em, :P)
I think you have completely misunderstood. This had nothing to do with cleaning dental instruments, and the research was certainly not so crude as to evaluate the bacteria-harbouring ability of a surface simply by a glance form a dental assistant! Life is just not that simple, not in dentistry, nor in metallurgy. BTW your autocalve comment was entirely irrelevant.
The information came for research reported at
I present some of the rather technical document here in italics.
(BTW a 'curet' is a dental scraping tool, used to scrape plaque of teeth and dental fittings, such as implants, that reside in the mouth)
"Effects of various hygiene procedures on the surface characteristics of titanium abutments.
Meschenmoser A, d'Hoedt B, Meyle J, Elssner G, Korn D, Hammerle H, Schulte W.
Poliklinik fur Zahnarztliche Chirurgie und Parodontologie, Zentrum Fur Zahn- Mund- und Kieferheilkunde, Universitat Tubingen, Germany.
"The use of cleaning instruments on titanium implants may cause undesired surface alterations.
"In a qualitative and quantitative assessment of these alterations, 5 titanium implant abutments were treated with a steel curet, a prototype pure titanium curet, an air abrasive polishing system, and an ultrasonic system.
"Custom-made polymer templates, used to secure the curet to a vertical guide bar and a spring scale to maintain a constant instrument pressure, guaranteed a standardised procedure and reproducible results. The ultrasonic and the air abrasive polishing method were also standardised.
"Evaluation by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed surface alterations for all instruments and systems except the plastic curet, which did not roughen the surface at all. The confocal laser-scanning microscope allows a 3-dimensional reproduction of these surface alterations and their direct measurement. The profilometric tracing was not sensitive enough to register the minor effects caused by the titanium curet and the air abrasive polishing system. Dimensions of the resulting surface microstructure could be determined with the laser-scanning microscope.
"Since the influence of such surface defects on the peri-implant tissue reaction is unpredictable, the titanium curet and the air abrasive system can only be recommended with restrictions. The steel curet and the ultrasonic system proved to be totally unsuitable for cleaning titanium implants."
Having had quite an interest in dentistry, with an enormous amount of work done on my own choppers, I feel able to translate this to layman's language.....
Titanium is used for certain metal parts used in conjunction with dental implants and crowns. These parts remain in the mouth, in contact with the gums. If the surface of the metal is damaged (say roughened) then the gums can react and become inflamed, or 'back off' from the offending surface, or other undesirable complications.
So dentists are interested in cleaning these metal surfaces without damaging the smoothness of the surfaces. Options for cleaning them include scrapers of various materials (e.g. plastic, steel or titanium), 'sand blasting' (with a very mild abrasive), and ultrasonic cleaning.
Scientifically controlled tests revealed that:
a). The plastic scraper did no damage to the titanium surface.
b). The titanium scraper and the sand blasting did sufficient damage as to be recommended only with caution.
c). The steel scraper and the ultrasonic cleaning both did sufficient damage as to be totally unsuitable.
We know that ultrasonics quickly blasts holes through aluminium foil.
Titanium is a pretty hard metal, relatively difficult to 'work'. If there is scientific evidence that ultrasonics also damages the surface of titanium, then surely we must wonder what ultrasonics do to brass of saxophones, and the brass and monel of the brass family of instruments.
I presented this material as just a snippet of further evidence to back up my assertion to other repair technicians in another forum that more research and caution may be advisable before continuing with the regular and repeated use of ultrasonic cleaning on precision surfaces where microscopic attack of the surface may provide the conditions for accelerated corrosion.

Answer:
Ultrasonic cleaners are moderately effective at breaking frozen keys free, but I don't use ours for that purpose. It does help to free frozen trumpet slides.
I have received a private message suggesting that I post my location in my profile to attract repair customers. I work in a shop with 8 technicians, 5 full time and 3 part time. We already have all the work we can handle, and we prefer to service our present customers well rather than take on more work.

Answer:
Gordon,
There are obviously several variations of devices that bear the label "ultrasonic cleaner." I, too, have a small immersion bath on the benchtop in the metallography lab that we use during sample prep for observation in either high power optical microscopy or SEM (scanning electron microscopy). If the method induced any damage at all, it would be completely unsuitable for the application. Given that it produces no detectable damage in the softest of metal and their plastic or epoxy mounts, I have to assume that our ultrasonic bath is not the same as the one cited in the dental article.
Our use of ultrasonic immersion baths is to remove any fine grit from crevices between the sample and its mount. These are typically particles of micron or sub-micron diameter made of either diamond or alumina. I could imagine that they might be effective in removing fine grit from key mechanisms but there is probably a limit in the case of a mechanism that is bound tight with rust - the reason being that rust is of lower density than steel and hence swells its volume, thus binding the rod.
We use water as the medium in our setup - we could use Hoppes #9 only in a fume hood. I'm sure that the concern, with respect to cleaning weapon parts in the ultrasonic tank, is that high carbon steel parts would quicky rust after a thorough cleaning if they could not be completely dried (or have all water displaced by dipping in a chemical bath such as Hoppes).

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Brass is a relatively unstable alloy, the zinc atoms being rather loosely held. Hmm. I would like to see the results of some independent and thorough research, including the requisite electron microscope examination.

Answer:
There are several different types of ultrasonic cleaners - I work at a jewelry store, and I play the saxophone and work on occaision at the store that I go to. We have an ultrasonic cleaner at the jewelry store that we use mainly for cleaning diamonds and on occaision for making a silver tarnish remover solution from aluminum foil, that produces waves so intense that you can feel them 10 feet away from the machine, we also have a much more passive machine that we use on pretty much everything else, that produces waves so mild in comparison that you can actually stick your hand in for half a second before it starts to hurt. (When I first started there, I would just leave it running for hours at a time and run a few different timers for the different pieces being cleaned and reach in real quick and grab them out so I wouldnt have to restart it over and over again, but then one day, I dropped a ring and went searching in the bottom for it for longer than half a second and YOW!! thats the last I ever did that!)
The shop that I go to has two cleaners, a little one about 20 inches long, and a huge one big enough for a man to sit in, both produce waves similair to the weaker machine at the jewelry store, and it does no harm - I put a tenor I was rebuilding in there once and left the room and saw someone I knew in the show room and started talking to him - I forgot about my horn for 45 minutes - there were no adverse affects to it - I removed pearls before, and the gold plating was perfect when I took it out.