All,
For those of you that are using UT and using large quantities of distilled water, something to consider is a demineralizer, and this is the best value I have found, https://dirinse.com/product/d-i-rinse-pro-50-unit/. It kind of expensive (but for this crowd, maybe not 😁), but if your tap water is of reasonable quality, it can produce about 2000 gallons of demineralizer water at a cost of $0.20/gallon, and it can be refilled ($200 for 2 refills), and the valve arrangement can make a very convient install. If you have a source of readily available cheap DI water, then you don't need to worry about bath life or filters/pumps etc to extend the bath life. And, you could easily add an effective rinse step as follow:
Step 1. Clean records in UT tank with aqueous chemistry
Step 2. Drain tank to household waste drain.
Step 3. Refill UT tank with only DI water and using ultasonics, perform rinse/final clean to remove any cleaner residue and any remaining very fine particulate.
Step 4. Remove records to dry.
Step 5. If cleaning another batch of records, just add cleaner to the existing DI bath and begin at Step 1.
Quick analysis with a 1.5 gal UT tank volume. There the demineralizer should provide enough for 1333 tanks, and assuming you are cleaning 3 records/batch, that is 4000 records. The initial cost is $0.30/tank for DI water, and for the Tergitol at 6 ml/tank, is $0.28/tank for at total of $0.58/tank or about $0.20/record. After the first 1333 records, the DI water cost drops to $0.07/tank, so the total per tank cost drops to $0.35/tank, and the per record cost drops to $0.12/record based on the assumptions of this analysis. Clean more than 3 or less than 3 records per batch, and the per record cost adjusts proportionally.
For those of you that are using UT and using large quantities of distilled water, something to consider is a demineralizer, and this is the best value I have found, https://dirinse.com/product/d-i-rinse-pro-50-unit/. It kind of expensive (but for this crowd, maybe not 😁), but if your tap water is of reasonable quality, it can produce about 2000 gallons of demineralizer water at a cost of $0.20/gallon, and it can be refilled ($200 for 2 refills), and the valve arrangement can make a very convient install. If you have a source of readily available cheap DI water, then you don't need to worry about bath life or filters/pumps etc to extend the bath life. And, you could easily add an effective rinse step as follow:
Step 1. Clean records in UT tank with aqueous chemistry
Step 2. Drain tank to household waste drain.
Step 3. Refill UT tank with only DI water and using ultasonics, perform rinse/final clean to remove any cleaner residue and any remaining very fine particulate.
Step 4. Remove records to dry.
Step 5. If cleaning another batch of records, just add cleaner to the existing DI bath and begin at Step 1.
Quick analysis with a 1.5 gal UT tank volume. There the demineralizer should provide enough for 1333 tanks, and assuming you are cleaning 3 records/batch, that is 4000 records. The initial cost is $0.30/tank for DI water, and for the Tergitol at 6 ml/tank, is $0.28/tank for at total of $0.58/tank or about $0.20/record. After the first 1333 records, the DI water cost drops to $0.07/tank, so the total per tank cost drops to $0.35/tank, and the per record cost drops to $0.12/record based on the assumptions of this analysis. Clean more than 3 or less than 3 records per batch, and the per record cost adjusts proportionally.