Cleaning your Airbrush using an Ultrasonic Cleaner

Every six months or so I take the time to deep clean my airbrush, Even if you take good care of your airbrush during day to day use, dry paint still manages to accumulate in parts of the airbrush mechanisms that you will never get out with normal cleaning. Ultrasonic cleaners are a great way to loosen up all that deep grime inside the brush.

While you could just drop your whole brush in the cleaner, its better to strip the airbrush down as far as you are comfortable. This way the ultrasonice cleaning can work more effectively. Small (less than 1 litre capacity) Ultrasonic cleaners are available cheaply on eBay and work very well.

Its worth a word of caution regarding what liquid you use inside the cleaner. In the step by step below you will see I have used window cleaner (Windex) and water. This is a very safe option as it will not damage the airbrush components or attack the plastic parts of the cleaner itself (like the tray). I did try using more aggressive liquids (like all-purpose thinners or acetone) and these generally do a better job of cleaning the metal parts of the airbrush but are not at all friendly to rubber seals found in some airbrushes. I no longer have the plastic basket that you see below because the solvent cleaning liquids dissolved it (yes it was a major mess).