The foil test: check that your ultrasonic cleaner works
A few pieces of kitchen foil show in ten minutes whether your cleaner still cleans, and whether it cleans evenly.
What you need
- Three pieces of aluminium foil, about 10 × 20 cm (4 × 8 inches) each
- Something to hang the foil from across the tank, such as a rod or a clothes hanger
- Your usual cleaning liquid
Steps
- Fill the tank to the fill line with your cleaning liquid.
- Degas the liquid and let it reach the temperature you normally clean at.
- Fold each piece of foil over the rod so that it hangs down into the liquid.
- Hang one piece in the middle of the tank and the other two a few centimetres from each end.
- Run the cleaner for about ten minutes.
- Lift the foil out and look at it.
Reading the result
With a working cleaner, all three pieces come out full of small holes and wrinkles, to about the same degree. If one piece is much less marked than the others, that part of the tank cleans less. If the foil is almost untouched, the cleaner is not doing its job.
Our own advice, not from a source: The test is written for lab tanks. A small jewelry cleaner only has room for one piece. The idea is the same: look for even holes and wrinkles across the foil.
A quicker check: the glass slide
Wet the frosted end of a glass microscope slide with tap water and draw an X on it, corner to corner, with an ordinary pencil. Dip the frosted end into fresh, degassed liquid and switch the cleaner on. The pencil marks should start to lift at once and be gone within ten seconds. Branson suggests doing this test once a month.