Using an Ultrasonic Cleaner

for Cleaning Skate Bearings

If you hate cleaning skate bearings as much as I do, then an ultrasonic cleaner might come in handy!  Well, I try not to clean my bearings too often and I use grease rather than oil to reduce the amount of maintenance I have to do, but I do a lot of skating which leaves me no choice.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading XSFred's Speed cleaning 20 bearings in 30 minutes article here, but unfortunately this method doesn't work very well for me since I use a lot of greased bearings.  Water and dishwashing liquid just don't cut the grease well enough for my liking, and I have to confess I'm a little lazy and am happy to avoid using elbow grease and the toothbrush as much as possible.  Still, XSFred's article is full of many useful tips, especially leaving the shield off one side of all your bearings to save on maintenance time.

What do I do different with the ultrasonic cleaner?  Here's my process:

Preparation

• Get some citrus cleaner and heat it to somewhere close below boiling point.  BE CAREFUL!  I buy my citrus cleaner from the local bicycle shop - much cheaper than buying from many skate shops.
• Take the 20 (or 16) bearings, each with one shield already removed, and place in the ultrasonic cleaner basket open side down.  This is so the crud can fall out of the bearings more easily.  Run hot water from the hot water tap over the bearings.  The extra heat makes the citrus cleaner even more effective at removing the grease/oil in your bearings.
• Put the basket back in the ultrasonic cleaner and pour the heated citrus cleaner over the top.

Cleaning

• Now run about 4-5 cleaning cycles one after the other.  Pretty soon the citrus cleaner will be grey and mucky.
• Lift the basket out of the ultrasonic cleaner and rinse the bearings under running water.
• Give each one a quick spin to hear the whiiiiiiizzzzzz of a clean bearing, and check to see all grease has gone.
• Rinse again to ensure all the citrus cleaner is out of the bearings.  You don't want that stuff mixing with the new lubricant we'll put in next

Drying and Lubricating

• Stick all bearings on a baking tray and bake them in the oven at 120 degrees Celcius for 20 minutes.  If your bearings have plastic retainers you might want to lower the temperature to avoid melting this.  My bearings are all metal so can easily take this temperature.  The idea is to dry the bearings thoroughly and get rid of all water.
• I now give the bearings a quick spray of WD40 to provide a protecting coating of water repellant.
• Apply your favourite lubricant!  I put 3 match-head sized dabs of grease per bearing for my greased bearings (or one drop of oil in my oiled bearings).  For easy and fast grease application, I use a syringe filled with white lithium grease, also bought from a bicycle shop.

Conclusion

And that's it, so far the easiest cleaning method I've found.  The cleaner was pretty cheap on eBay at around £45 (US$85), and well worth it to me because of the amount of fuss and hassle it's saved me.

Links

XSFred's Speed cleaning 20 bearings in 30 minutes article

Bearing maintenance article

Bont.com bearing cleaning article - this is what convinced me to get an ultrasonic cleaner.

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