Been a while
It's been a while since I've written. Egads, electrolytic rust removal was my last post! Funny, that reared its ugly head again recently. I had a massive rebuild of the tools in my shop, up to and including a new speed controller for my mill. (The lathe inherited the old one, along with a new variable speed motor. Yaaaay!) In the process I realized I'd sorely neglected my mill's vise.
The surfaces that need to be clean and mate well do, but the outer surfaces need help. The last time I did electrolytic rust removal everything was alligator clips and wire ties. Not wanting to short out the circuit with something as massive as a vise, I finally bit the bullet and designed something better. My new setup has a hanger bar that goes over the top of the tank, with #10-32 threaded holes on one inch centers. I can hang irregularly shaped objects pretty easily now, and installed a safety fuse as well so things don't blow up if a part falls off its hook and shorts out against the other electrode. Better yet I can hang multiple items and run them in parallel (as long as the total surface area doesn't go over my total capacity.)
All of which means I've spent my recent shop time dinking around with the rust removal setup and still haven't treated the vise. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
Eventually I'd like to either build a duplicate of this setup or adapt it so it can also serve as the power delivery for an anodizing setup. Only time will tell with that. First I need to get a pretty hefty load of sulfuric acid, get some dedicated tanks so I'm not handling the stuff all the time, and start testing again. It's been a while since I've done any anodizing.
Good to have the shop back in operation again.
-- Pencil
The surfaces that need to be clean and mate well do, but the outer surfaces need help. The last time I did electrolytic rust removal everything was alligator clips and wire ties. Not wanting to short out the circuit with something as massive as a vise, I finally bit the bullet and designed something better. My new setup has a hanger bar that goes over the top of the tank, with #10-32 threaded holes on one inch centers. I can hang irregularly shaped objects pretty easily now, and installed a safety fuse as well so things don't blow up if a part falls off its hook and shorts out against the other electrode. Better yet I can hang multiple items and run them in parallel (as long as the total surface area doesn't go over my total capacity.)
All of which means I've spent my recent shop time dinking around with the rust removal setup and still haven't treated the vise. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
Eventually I'd like to either build a duplicate of this setup or adapt it so it can also serve as the power delivery for an anodizing setup. Only time will tell with that. First I need to get a pretty hefty load of sulfuric acid, get some dedicated tanks so I'm not handling the stuff all the time, and start testing again. It's been a while since I've done any anodizing.
Good to have the shop back in operation again.
-- Pencil
posted by pencil at 1:58 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home