My buddy uses an ultrasonic on his rifle brass and does it for VERY cheap.
- Deprimes and FL resizes the brass and trims to length
- Throws them in the ultrasonic with:
* distilled water
* 1 tbsp of dish soap
* 4-5 tbsp of Birchwood Casey Case Cleaner (but 1-2 grains of baking soda works)
* Hit it for as long as you'd like them to be clean (he generally does an hour)
- Rinse with distilled water
- Let air dry (or use a hair dryer)
- Load and go
Now, he's doing this for benchrest, F-Class and sniper type competitions. When I asked him about pistol and rifle for 3-gun brass cleaning and if ultrasonic would be worthwhile, he said, "no way," as in 20-30 minutes of tumbling in a Dillon tumbler with walnut and Dillon polish, his brass is 'good enough' for what that needs. The reason he uses ultrasonic for his rifle ammo is just anal consistency of his ammunition. He generally is cleaning 50-100 pieces of rifle brass at a time, but that's only because he's got the small Harbor Freight ultrasonic. While there are larger tanks out there, he was quick to say there's a point of diminishing returns as the brass prep and loading times are the limiting factor as his philosophy for precision reloading of the bolt guns is that all operations happen within a 4-8 hour period due to brass constriction. That's too much for my pea brain to handle, but his groups prove that he's done some homework.
So, I'm sticking with my tumbler. He is considering going to stainless steel tumbling as it gets the brass SUPER clean, but it's just loud as hell.