Humminguru Nova

“Can’t beat the convenience factor of the US machine”
@audphile1 

Exactly!  I believe you will appreciate the convenience more as your collection grows. For extra dirty records, run a longer cycle or ran them through Nova twice. All you need is distilled water and new records to keep the cleaning regime going! 

The only system I will ever use. https://kirmussaudio.com/

FWIW:  most nonionic surfactants used in record cleaners have two purposes:

• Wetting:  Reduce the surface tension of water thereby allow the water to easily spread-out across the surface which is commonly called wetting.  This wetting ability improves cleaning efficiency and also allows the record to dry faster since a thin film of water dries much faster than beads of water.
• Detergency:  When the surfactant concentration increases to the point where the surface tension of water decreases no more, this is known as the critical micelle concentration (CMC).  Increase the concentration >CMC and cylindrical and spherical type structures called “micelles” are formed and these are what provide the detergency (they lift and encapsulate oil and dirt).  Every surfactant has a different CMC.

If you know the specific nonionic surfactant, can identify its CMC and know the concentration, you can adjust the concentration for what property you want.  A high-performance nonionic surfactant like Tergitol 15-S-9 has a very low CMC of 0.0052% (52-ppm).  Used at 0.003 to 0.005% it will provide wetting but be at so low a concentration as to not interfere with the record cleanliness and is commonly known as a no-rinse concentration.   

Increasing the concentration to about 3X-CMC will get good detergency (as far as a nonionic surfactant is concerned) but the concentration will be so high, that you need to rinse to avoid any interfering residue.

 Tergikleen is a blend of two nonionic surfactants - Tergitol 15-S-9 that is water soluble and Tergitol 15-S-3 which is not water soluble and has no CMC.  Tergikleen is not really intended as a wetting agent (because of the 15-S-3) but is intended as a cleaning agent and needs to be rinsed as the manufacture states.

In this free book Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records-3rd Edition - The Vinyl Press, Chapter XIV, Table XXIII Nalgene™ Dropper Bottle Use for Degritter™ & Humminguru™ shows how to use known nonionic surfactants to obtain wetting or detergency.  Note that you can buy Tergitol 15-S-9 (1-pint) from Tergitol 15-S-3 and 15-S-9 Surfactant | TALAS whose shipping is expensive, but the Tergitol will last many years.  Otherwise, Polysorbate 20 can be bought from Amazon and best to purchase small volumes (6-oz or less) since it is not as shelf-stable as Tergitol.  The 2-oz Nalgene dropper bottle (that delivers a 0.04-ml drop) can also be purchased from Amazon Amazon.com : Nalgene Plastic Drop Bottle 2 oz. : Sports Water Bottle Accessories : Sports & Outdoors.

Also, note that many people have had good luck with the HG and 1-drop of G•Sonic Ultrasonic Concentrate – GrooveWasher.  

@antinn I skimmed thru the paper. Will do a deeper dive in a bit. But what I gathered is pure distilled water in UCM will do a good enough job unless the record is in bad shape and requires more involvement. 

@audphile1 
We also observed as @lalitk has stated, that ultrasonic cleaning with just distilled water works quite well for most contaminants as long as the record is not heavily soiled.