Luckily I was able to talk to a guy at a medical cleaning house who had a big one that was broken and willing to sell on the cheap. What I ended up with was a Branson 8510 that was pretty run down and dirty. I went to work troubleshooting the unit and seeing what I could hopefully fix and what needed to be replaced. I found that the timing switch and heating element were not fixable and that the ultrasonics did indeed work but some were loose.
Burnt up heating element
I ordered a new heating element from Alpha Omega Ultrasonics and a new Diehl 600 series timing switch from ebay and went to work cleaning the torn down unit with some bleach. Everything looked much better but the aesthetics were still not great which is just fine with me. I set the unit up in my garage again to test without the heater and switch after I made some repairs to the ultrasonics and ran a test which turned out great. The sample parts got very clean and the water even got somewhat hot from the cavitation.
Afterwards I went to dump the water outside and slid the Branson along the floor to the garage door. As I was bent over and twisting to move the heavy water filled cleaner I pulled my back out and had to stop the project for a few days. Now I know why there is a drain on the side.
Anyways, I am feeling better, got all the parts and continued making progess.
New heating element and ultrasonic transducers
Everything works great and I got a $1700 parts cleaner (if it were new) for much much less. Plus it doesn't use nasty chemicals to do the cleaning so that is good for both me and the environment.
Not the best looking piece ever but hey, it works great!
