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Unpopular opinion: you don't need a $400 ultrasonic cleaner for CLA work
I cleaned a seized Pentax K1000 shutter this morning in my apartment kitchen using a cheap Harbor Freight ultrasonic tank with some dish soap and distilled water, and the whole thing cost me about 40 bucks and took 15 minutes, so has anyone else found that the fancy lab-grade cleaners are really just overkill for most of the daily repair jobs we see?
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drewgonzalez11d ago
Feel like half the stuff marketed to hobbyists is just overpriced for no reason lol.
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matthewmartin10d ago
Ha! Joke's on me, I actually burned out two Harbor Freight cleaners before I figured out you're not supposed to run them dry for 20 minutes while you go grab a beer. But yeah, my current 40 dollar tank has cleaned more lenses and shutters than my college GPA ever managed. I just threw in a seized up Canon AE-1 last week with some Simple Green and it came out sparkling. The lab guys can keep their thousand dollar setups, I'll take my janky kitchen table setup and a 12 pack any day.
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