Greiner Ultrasonic cleaning tank

[ex 2 Base]

I have a friend who as a retirement hobby make clocks, he has been given a Greiner Ultrasonic cleaning tank which is not working. as yet I haven't seen the tank but he tell me it has valves. I need assistance here, so has anyone circuit diagram or experience on working on these things ? Apparently these cleaners was made in Switzerland.Ted

[karesz*]

Hi Ted,
Greiner has lot of US-Cleaner models...
rgds, Karl

[MotorBikeLes]

I have an ultrasonic cleaner with one valve and very large mains transformer. A search here should find it C/W circuit, it MAY be similar.
Les.

[barrymagrec]

I have repaired two ultrasonic cleaners, one valve, one solid state. In both cases the fault was the tuning cap, a 2Kv mica type in the case of the valve unit.

[Refugee]

Valve ultrasonic cleaners are very simple indeed.
They use a TV line output valve and a simple oscillator coil driving a big piezo sounder.
Reverse engineering would be just so simple that obtaining a circuit diagram would not be worth the trouble.

[WME_bill]

Ultrasonic cleaner.
I find these things terrifying. 2kv at 200ma - quite a good as an electric chair. So please be very careful indeed poking about inside.
I had one once which used a DA40 triode transmitting valve, operating on nearly 3kv. The valve had failed, and I wasn't sure the transformer was sound. The whole unit sparked everywhere, so I scrapped it. A replacement valve was almost the cost of a second hand car.

The difficult item ( expensive, and very specialist) is the piezo transducer, cemented onto the bottom of the tank. Keep that, even if you throw out the rest.

I now use a nice little unit obtained when my dentist modernised his equipment. Operating directly off the mains with several FET to drive the piezo elements.

For your interest, I attach the manual for a Dawe valve operated cleaner of 1958. Gives ideas upon use of cleaning chemicals (Teepol then or now any detergent).

As Refugee says, nothing much to the circuit, and easy to trace out. Hartley oscillator, working off unrectified mains, so giving 50khz pulses at mains frequency. No filtering of interference. Air cored coil, which has to be tuned to the resonant frequency of the transducers.
Versions of this sort of equipment (as hospital diathermy) were used in 1940 to jam enemy radar transmissions. So make sure your neighbours are not watching the television when you try it out.
wme_bill

[ex 2 Base]

Many thanks to all who have responded to my request. I haven't actually seen the cleaner as its some where near York ( we both are members of a model engineering club) my friend now tells me on the phone that it was work two months ago, then as always, it stopped. Thank you Bill for Dawe information, I will be very carefully at 2 or 3 KV, I'm enjoying life and wish to continue. Ted