No Bubbles?

J

J.Ottinger

Member
Yesterday I put a second sacrificial anode in the electrolysis tank, with a Favorite/Chicago #9 skillet after taking it out of the lye(oven cleaner). with one anode my charger would only read 2-3 amps, with the second it was jumping between 4-9 amps, bubbling like crazy, for several hours. Then the bubbling quit. I only had in there because there were some dark spots on it after restripping it in the Lye. I replaced it with a BSR Corn Bread Skillet that my wife picked up in Florida,($7), anyway, the bubbling never came back. This morning I check it out and most of the crud is gone but still no Froth in the tank. My question is, could I have overloaded my charger with the 2nd anode? Does the water need changed when it quits bubbling? The charger is humming but it's back down to reading like 2-3 amps. Any ideas?:icon_scratchchin:
 
If your charger is still reading 2A - 3A, the charger is working. At this current level you probably won't see a lot of bubbling. I assume that you are using Na2CO3 (washing soda) as an electrolyte and are using iron/steel anodes.

The two things that you might check are 1) are the anodes crudded up? If so clean them. 2) do you have a good clean connection to your work piece?
 
I think my charger is about done for. I borrowed it from my brother-in-law, which he ran over it with his boat trailor. I banged on it and now it's back to 4-9 amps.:whip2:
 
I use tacky backwoods electrolysis for my once a year needs. A plastic storage container that is 9” tall, two pieces of rusty 12” rebar and a battery charger that I would be afraid to hook up to a real battery. Set the charger at 6V 3 amp or 12V 6 amp, it don’t matter as it will put out 1.5 amps for a few minutes & then settle down to about 1 or 1.2 amps. Five gallons of water and A&H Washing Soda. Eight hours or overnight per position and the CI comes out like new. I scrape the rebar against each other to clean them and throw them in the corner until next year. Bailing wire holds them upright in the corners of my ‘electrolysis tank’.

I always get a steady stream of ‘itty bitty bubbles’ (say that 10 times fast) throughout the process. Smaller than champagne bubbles. No rush for me and my CI gets a coating of iron which helps hide the stains as the rust is removed rather than a coating of carbon. The carbon comes later from the lard and cooking.

Hilditch
 
Probably the diodes inside your charger gave up.the transformer still good that's why is humming. Time to replace the battery charger.:frown:
 
EdgarLopez said:
Probably the diodes inside your charger gave up.the transformer still good that's why is humming. Time to replace the battery charger.:frown:
Click to expand...

Possibly, but not probable given your symptoms. If an "impact adjustment" helps, you have some sort of intermittent connection. It might be a bad voltage or current selector switch, a bad solder joint, or an internal connector. I would wait until the problem resurfaces then try cycling the switches and see if the problem goes away, if so it is the switch. Next, if you are comfortable with working on it, you could open it up and unplug and replug any connectors that you find. You should also do a "tug test" on any crimped or soldered connections. You should unplug the charger before dong this.
 
Have you ever seen a grown man who had used this same piece of equipment all his life, stick his hand in and only come out with stubs. He forgot the Boring part.

And no it was not me.


Safety First, Your family is counting on it.:icon_thumbsup:
 
Have no fear, I'm quite safety oriented...was just having a little fun.

I can put my own safety to the test soon...graphite plates are supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Then it's a matter of gathering the small parts and putting it all together...then science happens!
 
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