Reply With QuoteAnyone want to try it with their Daytona or Nautilus?
M
For years I've been dunking minging old Vostok Amphibias that have arrived from Eastern Europe into my cheap ultrasonic cleaner without noticing any adverse effects and as such I was happy to recommend anyone else do the same. A thread started by Mezza yesterday ( http://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.ph...nic-water-bath ) got me thinking though: maybe I've been a bit of an idiot here. Can cavitation bubbles induced by high frequency pressure sound waves* really vibrate a watch and movement enough to undo screws, spread oil around and make the hands fall off a Tag Heuer? There's only one way to find out!
So here's the test subject - A 20 year old Vostok Amphibia with a broken mainspring:
First up, I changed all the seals and gave it a pressure test to 4 ATM:
Next, I adjusted some of the screws to test how much they'd loosen after a 15 minute bath.
"A" was tightened correctly
"B" was very loosely tightened
"C" was tightened than backed off 90 degrees
"D" was tightened than backed off 180 degrees
"E" was tightened than backed off 360 degrees
I then liberally applied some Moebius 8000 oil on top of the bridge jewels. Obviously you wouldn't oil there normally but I wanted to see how far it would spread. I did want to mix in a bit of dye as a visual aid but I couldn't find any lying round the house.
Into the cleaner it goes:
15 minutes later (far longer than it really needed to be in there) the watch is dried off and the case back removed:
You know what - absolutely nothing had moved and the oil was still in exactly the same place.
It's worth saying that this was a quick, unscientific test with a cheap, low power cleaner and I have no idea how much more powerful a commercial cleaner used by the professionals is and what the effects would be.
If anyone can find some flaws in my testing procedure or ideas to improve the test I'd be more than happy to listen and perhaps even try them out.
Finally, if anyone here is still worried about buying a diving watch from me in the future, please be assured that nothing half decent or vintage has ever been dipped in my cleaner!
*thank you Wikipedia
Last edited by Lampoc; 26th February 2019 at 07:35. Reason: Image link fix
Anyone want to try it with their Daytona or Nautilus?
M
Doesn't surprise me. I've got a cheap Lidl one (looks similar) and doesn't appear to do much.
Just out of interest, could you try it again without the basket please?
Good experimentation! :)
With regard to the one I use in work, it's a pretty aggressive piece of equipment and I don't doubt that it would cause a dreadful amount of damage to the delicate movement of a watch .. I forget the kHz it operates at, I'll check tomorrow out of interest but it's going to be a lot more than a 'hobby' type affair I would imagine
An interesting post OP ...... I'll still stick to my toothbrush and warm water though :)
Interesting. Thanks for your geeky thoroughness. Makes me feel less worried about the two times I've used mine. (Exact same model)
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I just dipped my finger in the cleaner with both the basket in and out (finger thankfully still intact!) and there was a noticeable difference - I could certainly feel some vibrations on the bottom of the cleaner. I'd never use the cleaner without the basket (and indeed objects must not be allowed to rest on the bottom of the device during the cleaning process, because that will prevent cavitation from taking place on the part of the object not in contact with solvent*) so I'm not sure what this would prove.Originally Posted by Dave+63
Just for you though, I tried it. This time I only undid 1 screw 360 degrees and left the same oil in place. Shorter bath too - only 5 minutes this time. Nothing happened again.
*thank you wikipedia again
Thanks.
I usually do as Paul suggests with mine (same model as yours) and that's to put whatever I'm cleaning in a glass jar filled with water and detergent and just water in the main bath. I don't use the basket.
I'll still not put a watch head in though just to be on the safe side.
That's fair enough and like I said in the original post, I'd never do it with anything decent or vintage. I'm just rather blasé with Russian watches :D
What I'd like to find is a dark coloured liquid with the same viscosity as watch oil (or something simple that would mix with watch oil to darken it), place it in numerous locations on the movement and redo the test. I'd also stick it on my timegrapher before and after - should have done that first time really.
I once boiled a cheap watch in soapy water to disprove the claims that water with detergent in would get past the seals of a dive watch.
Needless to say, there was no water ingress and the watch continued to work flawlessly.
G Shock inside for annual cleaning
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Another observation - mine says to do it for 40 seconds only. I'm guessing that's not deep clean timings by any stretch but rather to loosen surface grime just a bit. Threads still scared me off doing it though
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Nicely done. This has to be the front-runner for watch post of the year.
I once put a vokstok amphibia in recently-boiled water to loosen up a rubber strap, assuming the amphibia was 100% indestructible, before I knew any better. Needless to say, it was completely knackered as a result. Turns out heat can warp sensitive mechanical components or evaporate lubricants. Would not recommend.
Forget darkening. You want some of that UV-sensitive stuff that forensic scientists use: shine a UV light on it to see exactly where it's ended up. I forget what it's called though. And obviously it doesn't work if you get it on your hands and then get glow-in-the-dark fingerprints everywhere.
Oh, I like that idea. I also need to find out what it's called - I've tried UV oil, fluid and liquid on Amazon without success.
Semen.*
*thank you Wikipedia
Aside from the DIY suggestion above, it looks like the commonest one is Fluorescein. There are others, some of which are probably better for dissolving in oil, see:
https://www.fastcolours.com/fluorescents-161-c.asp
Just clicked the first one and a 20g sample is just under a tenner. I don't think you'll need the 5kg bucket! Labs apparently get through a lot of this stuff.
The best search term seems to be "fluorescent dye". The link above is just the first one I found actually selling the stuff.
Ultrasonic cleaning can definitely loosen screws. When I clean a movement I always remember to tighten the dial screws, which stay in the mainplate. Failure to do so will result in them falling out and potentially getting lost.........I learned this the hard way.
I still have concerns about the effect of ultrasonic cleaning of a watchhead and it's something I certainly wouldn't do. However, the fact that the movement isn`t submerged in a fluid medium may protect the oil films, the evidence of the OP's test certainly suggests this.
Paul
Not at the temperatures you're talking about!
That made me laugh, but I'm going to go with Rob's idea and have ordered some dye. Semen would have been much cheaper though.
Yep, I wrote this in the thread yesterday. In my early tinkering days I'd forget to remove or tighten dial screws and they'd back out BUT this is with stuff submerged & surrounded in cleaner.
I very nearly did the same thread idea yesterday after the thread but I didn't want to basically find nothing like this and then other people think it was a good idea, something going wrong and me getting the blame!
My theory for the difference is the sealed case being the barrier, the movement will be suspended in the case and there's air all around. The US effect is going to be almost non existent in a lot of places IMO because of the air inside the case. But is that the case in all areas of the movement? At the end of the day there's no need to do it to a watch head anyway, water, soap and a toothbrush. Then the fiddly strap can go in.
One thing I was going to do was Time the watch on the timegrapher before and after. But I suspect because of the sealed case & air there won't be any harm.
Empirical fact my friend.
I don't know precisely what was affected because I just put it in my box of broken watches to eventually teach myself watch repair on, but never got around to it. However, it went from about 10s/day accuracy to about 10mins/day. Not likely to be a coincidence, especially as it was only a couple of months old. There was no water ingress so temperature is the only explanation.
Seems most likely to me that it dislodged some oil. Maybe didn't evaporate, but could have thinned it, allowing it to run.
You could be right re the oil but it was the warping of metal components that I was referring to.
Just looking at the cleaner I have here in work and it's 50-60Khz and 1500w
Looking at a range of cleaners available the KHz (cleaning frequency) are around the same so I'm guessing it's the high wattage (cleaning power) that makes this one fairly aggressive
Last edited by cf31bloobird; 1st September 2017 at 12:28. Reason: dreadful grammar
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