Ultrasonic Cleaning

[TheFixer]

Just been talking to a Watch repairer and he said he never uses ultrasonic cleaning as it can cause metal fatigue.

Can that really be the case?

Anyone have any evidence of this? personaly I can see some logic to this but I have doubts.

Thoughts welcome.

[oldhippy]

There's plenty of info about this on the internet. My personal feeling is you would have to clean the parts hundreds of times under the same conditions using the identical way to cause any fatigue. The modern watches of today are more likely to wear out before anything like that would happen.

[Khronos]

The only experience I've had with ultrasonic cleaning is with automobile stem wound  clocks.  When I first started cleaning them I would get them all back together and in a short time the mainspring would break.  Then somebody tipped me off that it was okay to ultrasonic clean them but don't use any heat.  That fixed my problem.  Spring material does not like heat.  Anyway, that's all I know. 

[jdm]

If there is not much liquid, just the u/s process heats up a little. I guess it reaches about 50C in 10 minutes. That's on an household 50W cleaner.

[rodabod]

Many of the cleaning chemicals we use will naturally corrode watch parts. In a way, it's how they work.