Ultrasonic Chip Cleaning (10 Viewers)

[NorCalChip]

UPDATED 2014/12/10
Equipment and Materials:
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1. Hornady "Lock 'n' Load" Magnum Sonic Cleaner - dual transducer ultrasonic cleaner with 140 W of power (currently about $200 on Amazon).
http://www.amazon.com/Hornady-Stainless-Steel-Sonic-Cleaner/dp/B004EXWERQ

Do NOT skimp here. If you get a smaller, low power, single transducer unit marketed as a "jewelry cleaner", you WILL be disappointed.

The ultrasonic cleaner is also great for jewelry, glasses, fuel injectors, carburetor parts, filthy used chip racks from casinos, and even the stainless beverage holders in your poker table that get nasty after a few games!

2. Lundmark "TSP" (sodium metasilicate) Hard Surface Cleaner
http://www.amazon.com/Lundmark-TSP-Hard-Surface-Cleaner/dp/B001001VRA/

I hate the false advertising by Lundmark and others that boldly put "TSP" on the labels of their products that are NOT trisodium phosphate, but I love the way that sodium metasilicate cleans chips.

3. A plastic "chip barrel cage" (my term) taken from something called a "Salad Spinner" (about $8 for the one I got). I found this in a local Kroger grocery store. Below is a link to a salad spinner on Amazon that is identical to mine, though it's currently about twice the price that I paid in the grocery store:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005JYZSTK

IMPORTANT NOTE: In order to get good "turnover" of the chips while rotating the cage, I added four plastic ties to the sides of the cage. This easy modification significantly reduced the amount of time it takes to clean the chips! See the photos at the end of the topic.

If you can't get the same thing, substitutions could be made here, as you just need something to contain the chips while you rotate them during the ultrasonic bath. However, I strongly recommend plastic instead of metal here, in order to prevent tearing up the stainless tank in the ultrasonic cleaner. I also recommend finding something as large as possible that still fits in the ultrasonic tank.

4. Distilled Water (around 70-80 cents/gallon) - for better cleaning, and to help ensure that others who try this process will get similar results. Depending upon the hardness of the water in your location, use of distilled water can make a significant difference!

5. A large clean bowl to use for rinsing the chips in clean water after the ultrasonic bath. I used the large plastic container that came as part of the "Salad Spinner".

6. Lots of clean towels to pat dry the chips, and to wipe up any minor splashes that occur during rotating the chip barrel cage during the ultrasonic bath. I recommend "bar mop" towels. They are great for drying chips, and even better for wiping excess mineral oil from chips. They're also very cheap if you buy a pack of them at Sams or a similar warehouse club, and they'll keep you from getting in trouble with the missus for using her nice towels for wiping chips. Here's an example at Sams:
http://www.samsclub.com/sams/bakers-chefs-bar-mops-16-x-19-24-ct/prod3530205.ip

7. Measuring cup for the distilled water.

8. Measuring spoon (tablespoon) for the sodium metasilicate powder.

SKI! All items you listed were ordered and on their way, the salad spinner just arrived today lol. Very excited to get started I have 6k to clean and cant wait to get started. THANK YOU for all the time you spent on this write up, I appreciate it greatly.

 

[liftapint]

So....what did I do on Christmas Eve? I put my parents to work cleaning poker chips. I worked the ultrasonic cleaner. My dad rinsed the chips, patted them dry, and took them over to the quality control department (my mother). Mom inspected each chip, and sorted them into "done", and "not done", then used a little pin to clean any remaining gunk out of the crevices. What a team! OK, so we weren't too fast, but we did manage to clean 500 chips. They said we could go more tomorrow. My parents are kinda awesome! But their daughter is terrible (to put them to work like this!)

 

[Shaggy]

You have a lot of Empresses to clean over there. I'll be cleaning the ones Chipjoker got from you in a couple weeks. We'll post some before and after pics.

 

[tigon]

Ski, any thoughts on this cleaner? It seems to have a good shape for a salad spinner, good capacity (2.5L), but not sure if the unit's "cleaning power" of 160W includes the heating element.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-2-5L-ULT...NBOARD-LAB-TUBE-CARTRIDGE-GLASS-/271321259056

 

[NorCalChip]

Ski, any thoughts on this cleaner? It seems to have a good shape for a salad spinner, good capacity (2.5L), but not sure if the unit's "cleaning power" of 160W includes the heating element.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-2-5L-ULT...NBOARD-LAB-TUBE-CARTRIDGE-GLASS-/271321259056

I'm not the pro here but for what its worth...I looked into a rebranded version of this and it is way too weak to give you results. I bit the bullet *no pun intended* and got the Hornady on eBay for $185 out the door.

Just my .02

 

[ski_ex5]

SKI! All items you listed were ordered and on their way, the salad spinner just arrived today lol. Very excited to get started I have 6k to clean and cant wait to get started. THANK YOU for all the time you spent on this write up, I appreciate it greatly.

You're very welcome. I hope your chip cleaning all goes as well as mine!

Ski, any thoughts on this cleaner? It seems to have a good shape for a salad spinner, good capacity (2.5L), but not sure if the unit's "cleaning power" of 160W includes the heating element.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-2-5L-ULT...NBOARD-LAB-TUBE-CARTRIDGE-GLASS-/271321259056

Advantages:

• Lower cost

Disadvantages:

• Appears to be single transducer (see photo of bottom of tank)
• Unknown power to transducer (my guess is 60W, with a 100W heater)
• Smaller tank
• Unknown tank dimensions (will your chip barrel cage fit?)
• Ultrasonic timer has only five settings
• Heating element is not thermostat controlled

I'd recommend you look for something better. If you get something that doesn't work well, you haven't really saved any money... quite the contrary!

One other thing... I mentioned before that all of the ultrasonic units in this price range that I've seen are rather cheaply made in China. Whether you buy the Hornady branded unit, or something else, the quality control seems to be a bit dodgey based on customer reviews.

For that reason, I strongly recommend you buy something directly from Amazon, i.e. look for "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com". In my experience, Amazon's return policy and customer service are first rate. Again, I did not have a problem with my Hornady unit, but if you DO have a problem with whatever you decide to buy, you want to be able to get it replaced quickly, and without a lot of hassle.

 

[tigon]

I figured the price was too good to be true. Most of the industrial looking ones I see from Canadian sellers have more heating power than transducer power.

 

[liftapint]

Update from my Christmas chip cleaning experience (putting my parents to work -- yes, I have no shame). I really recommend trying a soak in warm/hot tap water (nothing added), for about 15-20 minutes before running chips through the ultrasonic process. It REALLY helped with the success of the cleaning process, I've found. But I'm working with pretty disgusting, dirty, slimy chips! I don't think it's probably necessary for chips that just need a light cleaning. But over the past couple of days, my little chip cleaning Santa elves (parents) and I have cleaned over 1000 secondary Empress $25s, and using the pre-soak method, we didn't have ANY chips that needed further attention after coming out of the ultrasonic machine (except for the drying and oiling, obviously). The success rate wasn't nearly as good when we didn't use the pre-soak method.

Have I mentioned that I have really cool parents? Anyone else have chip-cleaning parents (on Christmas Day, no less?)????!!!! My penalty -- having to listen to Christmas music while we do it. Yes, it's painful, but worth the help!

 

[NorCalChip]

Update from my Christmas chip cleaning experience (putting my parents to work -- yes, I have no shame). I really recommend trying a soak in warm/hot tap water (nothing added), for about 15-20 minutes before running chips through the ultrasonic process. It REALLY helped with the success of the cleaning process, I've found. But I'm working with pretty disgusting, dirty, slimy chips! I don't think it's probably necessary for chips that just need a light cleaning. But over the past couple of days, my little chip cleaning Santa elves (parents) and I have cleaned over 1000 secondary Empress $25s, and using the pre-soak method, we didn't have ANY chips that needed further attention after coming out of the ultrasonic machine (except for the drying and oiling, obviously). The success rate wasn't nearly as good when we didn't use the pre-soak method.

Have I mentioned that I have really cool parents? Anyone else have chip-cleaning parents (on Christmas Day, no less?)????!!!! My penalty -- having to listen to Christmas music while we do it. Yes, it's painful, but worth the help!

Awesome. Pretty sure if I solicited the help of anyone in my family they would just tell me to go outside and do something. :-!

 

[Puggy]

Great thread. Great info.

 

[tigon]

Nope... nothing like Oxi. No fizz, no sound. It did sud up with use however. That seemed to be consistent with your findings.

Have you tried any more chips with different amounts of the Red Devil/90? That's the only non-TSP product I can find here.

 

[ski_ex5]

Great thread. Great info.

Thank YOU! Remember the old photos of your hands and fingers worn raw from scrubbing your Empress chips? That was an inspiration to find a better way!

Have you tried any more chips with different amounts of the Red Devil/90? That's the only non-TSP product I can find here.

I hear that Amazon delivers to Canada! Seriously though, I looked on Amazon.ca, and didn't see the Lundmark "TSP" sodium metasilicate. I don't know if Amazon.com will actually deliver to Canada. Anyone know?

 

[Shaggy]

Have you tried any more chips with different amounts of the Red Devil/90? That's the only non-TSP product I can find here.

The Red Devil/90 definitely works... just maybe not as good as the Lundmark. I haven't cleaned anymore chips since the first batch. I will likely clean about 400 more in a couple weeks. These will be some gunky Empress and some old Cali Bell hotstamp quarters.

 

[tigon]

Amazon.com won't work. I find that they only deliver books and other specific things to Canada. Almost every time I've tried to have something shipped to Canada I've received an error message.

 

[Puggy]

Thank YOU! Remember the old photos of your hands and fingers worn raw from scrubbing your Empress chips? That was an inspiration to find a better way!

I'll never forget them [emoji6]

I'm just TapaTalking

 

[i'm nobody]

Looking forward to using all these tips when I start to put together a cash set. Thanks for the advice

 

[ski_ex5]

Pre-soak *MUST*READ*

If you pre-soak your chips in a bucket or sink full of hot water, they'll warm up. The internal heat will help loosen the grip of the gunk on the chip side and make make it easier for ultrasonic cavitation to blow it of. In addition, since you're using pre-heated chips, they won't cool down the water in your ultrasonic, so you don't need as powerful a heating unit there.

If your oven does low temperatures - like 150 F - you can also put your chips in there to warm up, but I'm not sure about any labels that use adhesive and what temperatures get risky. Most ovens don't go much below 200 F, which would be too hot to handle (literally.)

I really recommend trying a soak in warm/hot tap water (nothing added), for about 15-20 minutes before running chips through the ultrasonic process. It REALLY helped with the success of the cleaning process, I've found. But I'm working with pretty disgusting, dirty, slimy chips! I don't think it's probably necessary for chips that just need a light cleaning. But over the past couple of days, my little chip cleaning Santa elves (parents) and I have cleaned over 1000 secondary Empress $25s, and using the pre-soak method, we didn't have ANY chips that needed further attention after coming out of the ultrasonic machine (except for the drying and oiling, obviously). The success rate wasn't nearly as good when we didn't use the pre-soak method.

Thanks for the idea! I was intrigued by the idea of the pre-soaks, and optimistic it could help. So, on New Year's Day, I did a little chip cleaning and pre-soak experimentation.

Overall, I cleaned a little under 1,900 chips in 4-1/2 hours. First chips dropped in the tank at 5:30 pm CST, and I finished at 10:00 pm. That's only about 420 chips/hr. Quite a bit slower than my usual average, mostly because of the hot water pre-soak experiments. I did six pre-soak tests with Lucky Derby chips.

For the pre-soak tests, I used a large pot of water on a good quality stove top to keep the water a consistent 130F. I didn't use hotter than that because of risk of warping or other damage to the chips. I wouldn't have even done 130F on GOOD chips. I didn't mind risking my heavily worn Lucky Derby $100 (white) and $1 (red-orange) chips.

On these really grimy Lucky Derby chips, I did three batches pre-soaked, and three not pre-soaked for comparison. I alternated between pre-soaked and non-pre-soaked chips. In the ultrasonic unit, I checked cleaning progress every 30 seconds, and ran the unit until each batch of chips was *completely* clean. In these six tests, the 3 minute pre-soaks consistently reduced the amount of time needed in the ultrasonic unit by 30 seconds (2 min vs. 2-1/2 min) to get the chips *100%* clean.

I was rather disappointed, as it wasn't really enough time savings to make it worth the effort for me. Also, AT FIRST, I didn't see any improvement in fading/condition due to the 30 seconds less time in the sodium metasilicate. However, I was still optimistic that the pre-soaks might be more useful to help clean chips previously (and incompletely) cleaned by others (such as some of the Empress chips I've had in the past).

Regarding fading, I said "AT FIRST"...

It wasn't until the two days later when I was picking up the chips from the drying table that I noticed that the pre-soaked $1 chips were *significantly* faded relative to the non-pre-soaked chips! I was VERY surprised, as I had been hoping for the opposite. See the photo below. The chips on the right (close to the table edge) are the chips that were pre-soaked in plain water at 130F for just 3 minutes. OMG.

I was so surprised how badly the pre-soaked chips had faded that I thought I must have become confused on which of the red-orange $1 chips had been pre-soaked. However, since I already had the hot water on the stove anyway, I had pre-soaked all my remaining Lucky Derby $1 chips, and all of them were very faded too!

I'm sure that different colors will fade at different rates, and red, orange, purple, and some greens are probably the most susceptible, but I don't think I'll be pre-soaking chips again. At least, not unless I actually WANT to change to change the color of the chips!

Also note that I absolutely would NOT put my chips dry in the oven at anything even approaching 150F, even clamped for de-warping. Just my opinion, but I think that's WAY too hot, with a high risk of damage.

 

[liftapint]

^^^ that is SOOOOO strange.
I absolutely trust your research, I just don't understand it. Why would it cause more fading? Back to the drawing board, for the rest of my disgusting, slimy Empress $5s! They simply don't get clean in 2.5 minutes in the ultrasonic

 

[ski_ex5]

^^^ that is SOOOOO strange.
I absolutely trust your research, I just don't understand it. Why would it cause more fading?

My guess would be more heat, allowing the detergent in the ultrasonic to leech more pigment. It's why you wash your brightly colored clothes in cold water. For all I know, though, the pigment in my Lucky Derby $1s reacted to the heat *directly*, as I have no idea of the chemical makeup of the red-orange pigment.

 

[Mental Nomad]

Crap! I think the heat made the detergent more effective and it took out color, or it made the oils in the chip more volatile and you lost those. Does oiling help restore them?

 

[NorCalChip]

Did you soak in tap water? If so, is it plausible the chlorine added to tap water was present enough to alter the color?

Just wondering if that would happen with distilled or purified water.

 

[ski_ex5]

Crap! I think the heat made the detergent more effective and it took out color, or it made the oils in the chip more volatile and you lost those. Does oiling help restore them?

Oiling makes them look better (as always, IMHO!), but there's still a very noticeable difference between oiled pre-soaked chips and oiled non-pre-soaked chips.

It still bothers me that I didn't notice it when I first put them on the table to dry overnight. Granted, they're still a bit wet at that point even after being patted dry with bar mop towels, but I'm surprised it didn't catch my eye right away. I can't imagine that the fading actually happened while the chips were drying overnight!

Maybe the difference between oiled pre-soaked chips and oiled non-pre-soaked chips will diminish a bit after the chips have more time to soak up the Johnson's Baby Oil GEL that I prefer to use.

- - - - - - - - - Updated - - - - - - - - -

Did you soak in tap water? If so, is it plausible the chlorine added to tap water was present enough to alter the color?

Just wondering if that would happen with distilled or purified water.

Good thinking, but I used distilled water. =(

 

[Mental Nomad]

The other thing that can help restore them is to use them... since these are real clays, the pigment in in the material. You may have oxidised or leached the pigment on the outer layer, but as that outside layer wears down with use, fresh color will emerge.

But that's definitely a slow process.

 

[courage]

An update on my ultrasonic odyssey. Many thanks to ski_ex5, tommy, shaggy and others who've paved the way. This stuff works great for Paulson chips. Hope we can adapt it safely for ASM/CPC chips in the future.

I bought a 6L capacity, 200W heater, 180W ultrasonic power unit off eBay for $146 shipped. Seems good enough. Some reviews I'd read said the controls and boards in many brands were identical, just marketed differently.

I snagged a Progressive brand salad spinner at the local Wal-Mart since I liked how it fit the unit and thought maybe the pulley function would be nice.

Then I adapted the external bowl by drilling 7/8" holes all around the sides and base. I wasn't sure this would allow the ultrasonic to do its thing, but seems to be just fine. This part was pretty tedious and made a big mess for a couple hours but I did it while watching TV lol. Use a pocket knife and round file from your fishing tackle to clean up the edges.

Put some zip ties inside the chip tumbler and you're ready to go. I later added a single different color zip tie so I could track revolutions of the cage if necessary.

I used this Savogran brand TSP since it's at my local Lowe's. I've used it several times before with success when hand-cleaning chips. The label gives little indication of what it contains, but the warning does say it contains Trisodium Phosphate and Sodium Carbonate. Gloves, glasses, good to go.

I followed ski's recipe fairly closely. For this unit a gallon of distilled water works great, then add 4 tablespoons of TSP. I tried settings of 41*C and 42*C and settled on 42 (107.6 Fahrenheit). I usually had to kick the ultrasonic on for a minute or two to keep the temperature near that setting, then it would normally drop a degree when adding the chip cage.

I was originally hoping I could maybe get up to a rack of chips processed, but 50 - 60 is my comfort zone. Too many chips in the cage if more than that, and the pulley isn't built for that kind of load! But it worked well. Just have to be careful not to go too fast or it's easy to overspin and slosh water over the sides.

First up for testing were some nasty roulette chips. I ran these at 41*C for two minutes. Came out very nicely considering how grungy they were.

Cleaned on left, dirty on right:

Next up were 2 racks of Artichoke Joe's 25c chips I got from Spinetti's quite a while back. They basically ripped me off as the lot is full of badly warped spinners. Like the roulettes, they cleaned up great and stamps weren't affected. I also ran these for two minutes at 41*C, but probably could have gone less time. Some dirty samples on the right:

Now it was time to clean my fav mixed casino Paulson set. The Longhorn 50c, Flamingo $1's and Casablanca $5's were cleaned when I got them, but over time have accumulated some gunk, most noticeable on the faces of the Flamingos and edges of the Longhorns and Casablancas. It's hard to see in some of the pics - they're worse in person. I ran these for one minute at 42*C.

Dirty pr0n:

Clean barrels on left, dirty on right:

Shiny Flamingos!

I cleaned half the set tonight, will finish the others tomorrow.

Some gunky water afterward.

And some mildly disturbing pink residue from the Casablancas. Will step back the amount of TSP just in case, but chips look fine.

Very pleased with this method. Fast and efficient and no more scrubbing my fingertips raw. Thanks ski & all!

 

[Tommy]

That's a nice machine. Having a drain port is great. Love the hackery!

 

[courage]

Thanks, Tommy!

No before/after pics of these but the set is ready for oiling edges. I did my local Paulson quarters and it really brightened them up. Also some sample chips that were pretty dirty that included TRK, ceramics, Bud Jones (I think). The Caesar's $2 were worst - had to run them another 30 seconds.

 

[NorCalChip]

Beautiful

 

[liftapint]

Those quarters are SWEET!

 

[courage]

Those quarters are SWEET!

Thanks, Mel! I need 18 more of them to make a rack and unfortunately they are now nearly impossible to find. It's keeping me from building another set.

 

[ChaosRock]

Yesterday, once again, I was back to the 'machine'!

I got some Garden Cities from Keller, 400 x $5s and 200 x $100s, both Grand Inlays. My plan is to use them in different RHC relabeled sets, the $5s as $5s in a cash set and the hundos as T500 in a tourney set. Both are in good shape, closer to well used than mint but better than the corresponding Giant Inlays.

I used the process I always use and the results were as good as always. I'm still using the real TSP, same as courage. The one Ski recommends, I couldn't find locally, and I NEVER remember to order that stuff online... Still need to use that product to test and compare results.

I still experienced the same 'diminishing power' of the TSP as I load the batches. One TSP measurement for the tank was good for about 200+ chips, after that, I had to increase minutes too much for the same result. I am SURE it must be the TSP I'm using or the fact that I am not using distilled water...

I ended up dropping 8 chips in the tank during one of the middle batches, and I only retrieved them when all the chips were cleaned. They were submerged about 5x longer than the other chips on average. I couldn't notice any increased discoloration or fading but it must have been because they were only 8 chips in a batch of chips that are not super consistent to begin with...

Here's a couple picture of the cleaning and drying... In the comparison picture, it looks like one of the chips is not totally clean, but it is... I took the picture right after they were out of their 'bath' and they were not evenly dried yet... I did not pictured the pre-wash hundos but they were as dirty, if not more, than the fivers...