homemade cleaning machine ?

[HectorLooi]

Just sidetracking a little. Here is a cleaning basket which I made from a tea strainer. I fix it to my drill press and spin it in a jar of cleaning fluid. Works pretty well.

[KarlvonKoln]

You know, I wonder if I could adapt a micro-mesh single-serving reusable coffee filter to the same purpose. I keep ending up working on large (50 & + mm.) Swiss pocket watch movements that would not fit into smaller cleaning holders.

But they might fit in a coffee filter.

You gave me an idea, sir! Thank you.

[HectorLooi]

Just received my magnetic stirrer yesterday. The magnets are not very powerful, so hopefully it doesn't magnetize everything. It can also works as a "line release" tool. 

If it doesn't work, I'll have a hot cocoa machine, parts dryer, a line release tool and maybe a demagnetizer. 

[AshF]

That's a fancy one.  I've started to design a basket that will hold my mini baskets in, so I can dunk them all in one go.  What's a "line release tool"?

[watchweasol]

Hi  A line release tool is a transformer which creates an alternating magnetic field and is used to drive quartz watches at speeds greater than  the circuit block. Used to loosen up the gear train on sticky watches and remove gear train jams through dirt. Its no substitute for cleaning and oiling the train but handy for diagnostic work.

The Inventivness of members is brilliant and must be encouraged in getting round dificulties and sharing their ideas is just great long may it continue.Not everyone can afford swish tools but make do with DIY soloutions. Magic.

[HectorLooi]

I don't know why it's even called a "line release" tool. Maybe it was what the Chinese manufacturer called it.

A "line release" tool is found on some quartz watch testers. It uses a spinning magnet to produce an alternating magnetic field. When a non working quartz watch is placed on it, it will spin the rotor of the stepper motor inside the watch and move the hands of the watch. It is used to test if the problem with the watch is a mechanical one or something else.

Sometimes it's a quick fix for a quartz movement that is just stuck for some reason. I've used it many times to free up a seized movement. But many times the watch will be back shortly as the reason for the watch being stuck was not fixed. 

[HectorLooi]

11 minutes ago, watchweasol said:

The Inventivness of members is brilliant and must be encouraged in getting round dificulties and sharing their ideas is just great long may it continue.Not everyone can afford swish tools but make do with DIY soloutions. Magic.

Necessity is the Mother of all Invention.

Let me tell you a really sad story. You see the nice L&R Mastermatic below? I won the bid on that last month. It was one of the best ones I've seen on ebay in a long time. And it came with all the accessories. It even came with the cleaning fluid samples.

The seller forgot to remove the cleaning fluids and shipped it. And as luck would have it, the US Customs found it and immediately confiscated the shipment on the account of shipping restricted materials. 

The seller attempted to get it back for me but I told him to leave it as it might involve a hefty fine. I blame myself as the auction cutoff time was on Sunday morning, in the middle of church sermon. I ducked out for a few minutes to get in a last minute bid. And I won it at a ridiculously low price.

I guess God wasn't happy with that. 

 

[watchweasol]

That's a sad tale Hector it looked a good machine too   hope you did not  loose too much on the deal         .

[HectorLooi]

All that I lost I count as gain.

God was merciful. I didn't lose a cent. The seller got paid. Only the poor, innocent machine was lost. 

[jdm]

1 hour ago, HectorLooi said:

The seller attempted to get it back for me but I told him to leave it as it might involve a hefty fine.

You should check if that is really the case. For example, it has happens that import watches are seized because of a protected species (CITES) strap, the addressee is given a chance to recover the watch with the condition the strap is destroyed. That turned complicated anyway.

Also, I assume the items was shipped domestically and seized by USPS. Because it is pictured with an USPS box above.

[HectorLooi]

It flew by Fedex all the way to Erlanger. It was seized by customs. Ebay said they won't be returning the package to the seller

[AndyHull]

On 7/2/2020 at 12:33 PM, AshF said:

@rodabod It says it has an adjustable stirring speed 100 - 3000rpm.

I'm going to give this a go.  I'll report back how things went.

That might actually have the effect of de-magnetising the components.

If you have ever encountered the workings of an old fashioned CRT based colour TV, they often had a degausing coil circuit.

This worked by applying an alternating magnetic field around the tube with the coil (at line voltage frequency) that slowly collapsed, so not entirely dissimilar to the rotating magnet of the stirrer.

Degausing coils work exactly the same way as watch demagnetisers. Generally they consist of a coil of wire (the electromagnet) and a PTC thermistor or some similar arrangement that allows an initial inrush of current, but then rapidly quenches that inrush, and thus a strong, but rapidly changing magnetic field, the quenching circuit then acts by decreasing the intensity of the field to zero. When you switchedon an old colour TV, then off and back on rapidly, you could sometimes see the effect, as the picture would shimmer for a second or so at power on. Some even had a button on the back of the TV to demagnetise the tube. Pressing the button produced the same effect.

You stir bar should cause the rotating magnetic field (at 100 to 3000 hz). The trick might be to slowly withdraw the baskets while the stirrer is still running, hence causing the field to decrease to zero without setting it up in any particular orientation for any significant time.

Edited July 10, 2020 by AndyHull

[rodabod]

That did cross my mind, but I’m not sure the moving magnet would work like a degaussing coil as it’s a fixed magnet which is moving radially, rather than its pole changing, ie. if the fixed magnet’s pole was effectively rotating, which it is not. Still, the rotation may have some effect which I’ve overlooked. 
 

I can’t remember if I mentioned this here before, but when HD TV first appeared, I had a lecture where the lecturer used a white board marker to point at and circle the various measurement aspects of the then-new Testcard HD. That was all fine until he used the whiteboard eraser.... he’d forgotten it was a magnetic one and made a real mess of it. It was a £50k Sony with built-in degauss on startup which made absolutely no difference. I think that one had to go back to the maintenance department.  

[HectorLooi]

Watch testers of the design below use a similar setup as a stirrer. A bar magnet is rotated on its centre. At any point on the perimeter of the circle, an alternating magnetic field is produced. It works on weakly magnetized objects. I haven't tried it on strongly magnetized ones.

[luiazazrambo]

Okay, so what now? Do you keep your coffee warm now or do you clean watch parts?  We are thirsty! 

[luiazazrambo]

On 7/4/2020 at 4:01 AM, HectorLooi said:

Just sidetracking a little. Here is a cleaning basket which I made from a tea strainer. I fix it to my drill press and spin it in a jar of cleaning fluid. Works pretty well.

 

Could we have dimensions here please?

[HectorLooi]

2 hours ago, luiazazrambo said:

Okay, so what now? Do you keep your coffee warm now or do you clean watch parts?  We are thirsty! 

Haha. I don't drink that much coffee anymore. It gives me the shakes. Sometimes a late afternoon cuppa will keep me awake till 3am. 

I'm still waiting for my star shaped stirrer and larger tea strainer to arrive from AliX.

[HectorLooi]

1 hour ago, luiazazrambo said:

 

Could we have dimensions here please?

The base is about 30mm, the opening of the basket is 50mm and height with cover is 50mm.

[luiazazrambo]

Found two candidates: nr1 and nr2 and there are more to check. What is a start shaped stirrer? I can imagine one, but do you have a link to it, or a picture? Here it is he morning now and I just had a coffee, used a normal spoon instead of a star shaped stirrer. 

[HectorLooi]

#Aliexpress SG$ 21.48 | 3pcs,40*7mm PTFE Magnetic Stirrer Gear Type Octagonal Magneton Stir Bar Spinbar Stirring Mixer https://a.aliexpress.com/_dZcXpgp

[HectorLooi]

Sorry, link doesn't work.

[HectorLooi]

A short spoiler on things to come. 

[luiazazrambo]

I am sooo excited.  I would have put that cocoa on just to wind us up! 

[luiazazrambo]

Now I dont know if this is off-topic or not, as I dont know the price of it, but when I was hunting cleaning machine baskets this came up: GS 2047D At the bottom of the page you can find that GS 2047D cleaning machine. I would like to see it in action.

[HectorLooi]

Just testing my contraption with some random stuff in my clinic. Using plain water only.

Notice the huge vortex. Some anti-vortex baffles will definitely be necessary.

Everything comes out magnetized but the good news is that the magnetic stirrer itself can be used to demagnetize the items.