Atomrepair
Member
Time for an update. I postponed my UC purchase until after finishing my new workplace, which finally happened a few weeks back. I'm now the owner of an EMAG Emmi-D40 cleaner. I got it straight through EMAG, who are selling it at a discount: €386 before taxes, including shipping (from Germany to the Netherlands). I ended up getting a different cleaning solution than mentioned in my first post; Flux Remover Ultrasonic Cleaning Solution from Allendale Ultrasonics. Also got me some demineralized water. Sadly, and perhaps stupidly, I only had two boards on hand that were worth the bother testing with.
The first thing I checked when I got this cleaner is whether logic boards actually fit in there, and thats where a disappointment came in. While the EMAG site states that the insides of the basket are 280 x 140 x 85 mm, which should be just right (15" retina board is a little over 26cm wide), those boards don't actually fit in there, because the basket gets narrower towards the bottom. It's actually more like 24cm x 10cm down there.
I could, however, bend the basket a little bit out of shape to make these boards fit. I was told by EMAG that the effectiveness of the cleaner will not be hindered if I do that, as long as the sides of the machine are never touched. Perhaps I could even cut out part of the basket. Doing that, the larger boards would no longer stick out the top. This is a small letdown, but fixable, so not a big issue. On to cleaning!
The cleaning
I filled the cleaner with 3 liters of demineralized water and 350 ml of cleaning solution. Its recommended to use 5-10%, so I was a little over that. I had expected to fit a little more water in there seeing that the specs list a 4 liter tank, but good luck fitting that in there without it pouring over the edge.
Allendale recommends always degassing the solution first, so I did that for for 10 mins. After that, I set the temp to 65 degrees and waited... and waited... and waited. It took about two and a half hours to reach 65 celsius. 2.5 hours! I heard that these cleaners take a while to warm up, but this seems a bit excessive. Fine, this too is fixable. I'll get an immersion heater from china to speed it up.
Time to dump the basket 'n board in there. I have two boards to put in there. One scrap board from china with some green and other assorted goop on there, and a water damaged board which I've already got into working state, but still has some corrosion and flux on it.
I first put the boards in 1 minute cleaning sessions in four orientations. This cleaned some of the gunk away, but much remained. I followed up with another sessions of 2 minutes per orientation, so thats 12 mins of cleaning in total. After that, most of the nasty areas looked pretty clean, I think. Before/after images are attached. One particular row of pins on IC 51125 refused to get clean. I cleaned that spot for like ~20 minutes but it wont budge.
Conclusion
With some modifcations, this cleaner will fit 13 and 15 inch boards, heat up fast with a seperate heating element and it does clean shit off of board, even if it takes a little longer than a Crest would.
It is also, at least currently, priced extremely favorably. However, that is all useless if it doesn't clean properly. Due to my lack of experience with these cleaners I dont know if the cleaning is any good. The boards I tried the device with weren't terribly badly corroded to begin with. I'm going to quickly try and get me some more seriously nasty boards so I can run those through. I want to hurry this up, because if this cleaner is poor I want to try and return it ASAP. Hopefully I can get some shit boards quick and post some results.
Besides the cleaner, the cleaning solution might also make a big difference, but I cant get Branson EC in Europe. Again, I cant compare. Sadness.
The first thing I checked when I got this cleaner is whether logic boards actually fit in there, and thats where a disappointment came in. While the EMAG site states that the insides of the basket are 280 x 140 x 85 mm, which should be just right (15" retina board is a little over 26cm wide), those boards don't actually fit in there, because the basket gets narrower towards the bottom. It's actually more like 24cm x 10cm down there.
I could, however, bend the basket a little bit out of shape to make these boards fit. I was told by EMAG that the effectiveness of the cleaner will not be hindered if I do that, as long as the sides of the machine are never touched. Perhaps I could even cut out part of the basket. Doing that, the larger boards would no longer stick out the top. This is a small letdown, but fixable, so not a big issue. On to cleaning!
The cleaning
I filled the cleaner with 3 liters of demineralized water and 350 ml of cleaning solution. Its recommended to use 5-10%, so I was a little over that. I had expected to fit a little more water in there seeing that the specs list a 4 liter tank, but good luck fitting that in there without it pouring over the edge.
Allendale recommends always degassing the solution first, so I did that for for 10 mins. After that, I set the temp to 65 degrees and waited... and waited... and waited. It took about two and a half hours to reach 65 celsius. 2.5 hours! I heard that these cleaners take a while to warm up, but this seems a bit excessive. Fine, this too is fixable. I'll get an immersion heater from china to speed it up.
Time to dump the basket 'n board in there. I have two boards to put in there. One scrap board from china with some green and other assorted goop on there, and a water damaged board which I've already got into working state, but still has some corrosion and flux on it.
I first put the boards in 1 minute cleaning sessions in four orientations. This cleaned some of the gunk away, but much remained. I followed up with another sessions of 2 minutes per orientation, so thats 12 mins of cleaning in total. After that, most of the nasty areas looked pretty clean, I think. Before/after images are attached. One particular row of pins on IC 51125 refused to get clean. I cleaned that spot for like ~20 minutes but it wont budge.
Conclusion
With some modifcations, this cleaner will fit 13 and 15 inch boards, heat up fast with a seperate heating element and it does clean shit off of board, even if it takes a little longer than a Crest would.
It is also, at least currently, priced extremely favorably. However, that is all useless if it doesn't clean properly. Due to my lack of experience with these cleaners I dont know if the cleaning is any good. The boards I tried the device with weren't terribly badly corroded to begin with. I'm going to quickly try and get me some more seriously nasty boards so I can run those through. I want to hurry this up, because if this cleaner is poor I want to try and return it ASAP. Hopefully I can get some shit boards quick and post some results.
Besides the cleaner, the cleaning solution might also make a big difference, but I cant get Branson EC in Europe. Again, I cant compare. Sadness.
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