My crumb tray was filthy disgusting
(even My mother said it was the filthiest pigsty she ever saw)
I soaked the grid in simple green, I scrubbed it, I washed the pan with alcohol
(That actually worked really well) but after 6 washings and cleanings it still leaves the
container with black muddy water, So I was thinking my oven has a cleaning cycle
what if I put the grid in there for a few hours and it turned all the filth to ash?
it is all aluminum, so I don’t see why it could not handle the heat…
Unless they change something serious, your honeycomb should be steel.
Part of what makes the crumb tray useful is that it’s extremely flat. The honeycomb structure is pretty rigid, but I would not subjected to such extreme heat if I were you. The chance that it would would warp just seem too high to me.
I disassemble my tray and then put the honeycomb in a hot bath of soapy water. Last time I used ammonia and to be honest it seem to work just about as well as Dawn. I have a big plastic tub from Home Depot that I slosh the whole thing around and then I scrub the entire thing with a fairly stiff nylon brush.
Then I take the honeycomb out of the bath and use a garden hose to blast it as a rinse. I usually do two or three iterations of this until the water is fairly clean, and then I take a high-pressure blower to speed up the drying process. The blower knocks most of the water out of the center of the honeycomb. I leave the whole thing in the sun or if it’s cloudy I put it someplace warm and dry and run a fan across it. My theory is that I don’t want the honeycomb to stay wet for very long, that seems like it would promote rust.
I’m especially careful to blow out any screw holes, I don’t want water inside the threads.
This seems to work pretty well for me . The honeycomb is never pristine at the end of it but it is pretty good.
Cleaning the thin metal plate from the bottom of the tray is trivial, I just scrub it with soapy water. The plastic parts are also easily cleaned.
Wow. I’m lucky to get it out and emptied. I had no idea it even came apart. Anyone know if it is bad for the outside of the glass laser tube to be dirty? I dust it, and have tried wiping it gently with moist alcohol wipes, but it is stubbornly coated with (mostly) brown spots that don’t come off.
Glowforge has said that they never really do deep cleanings of their machines at all. The glass being clean is not really an issue, unless you find that your laser isn’t working at some point and want to see if it’s even lighting up.
The oven might clean the grill but it would show you the parts that are plastic as well like it did to me the first week I had a Glowforge. I have had three machines but only one crumb tray and it still has the marks it got in the first week.
Wow, I wouldn’t do that! You would probably end up warping it but at least then you’d have a brand new clean one … after you ordered a replacement that is.
If you’re really hell bent on scrubbing it clean, soak it first, then use a pressure washer.
I say go for it - I’ve tried loads of things and not really got anywhere. If it works I want to try it as well!!
I can’t imagine it would warp really - but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure your oven will get hot enough to make a difference either. I tried blow-torching mine and it didn’t do anything convincing.
I do wonder if oven cleaner would work for cleaning?
BTW - whether it works or not I’d be more concerned that whatever was on the crumb tray is now in my food oven. (I have a very strict no-craft/industrial-tools-cross-with-food-tools rule)
Universal’s honeycomb is aluminum. i hate it. yeah, it weighs less than it would if it was steel, but it bends a lot and magnets don’t work. it’s much more of a nightmare to hold down anything that isn’t flat.
But that is because I never use my crumb tray and have lost a few of them. I have a nice new clean one but it just collects dog hair. So I will need to deshed it before I use it again.
I am with @ekla Whatever garbage is on your tray we can be pretty confident that you would not want it, and teh fumes created by it, in your oven. Those Totinos pizza rolls I know you love might come out tasting…extra smoky with a twinge of burned acrylic. Not to mention what it might do to the Passover Brisket. BIrch isnt a wood you typically smoke meat with!
Lye about it.
Seriously though, I used Super Clean, which has lye in it, to remove smoke deposits on raw ply amazingly well. Not sure how caustic it was, so I had on thick gloves and googles and rinsed with vinegar water to even out the PH for the wood. I used it to soak my full crumb tray in, and it does a great job of cleaning it up – better than anything else I’ve tried! Just make sure to dilute before disposal.
