Sean, thanks for your excellent responses and your patience.
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Originally Posted by seanc
You haven't said how big your tank is, or how large your anodes are, and you will be limited by those.
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Actually I did in an earlier post but for the sake of clarity, I'm using a 1.5 gal tank with two 4x8 zinc anodes and running the bath at 110F. This is the basic 1.5 gal Copy Cad/Zinc Kit from Caswell with the new electrolyte formula.
For now the largest object I expect to plate is probably in the neighborhood of 7" sq-in. Doing the math gives me a current requirement of 980ma or (7" sq x 140 ma/sq-in), far below the lowest range on my ammeter.
To answer your earlier question, the ammeter is a single scale meter with 5 amp gradations up to 30 amps, and the voltmeter has 1 volt gradations up to 20 volts. Not very useful for plating small items, or plating in general it seems.
This rectifier really seems geared towards automotive uses since the voltage dial and voltmeter both have markings for 13.8 volts. It did not come with a manual, and looking at the
manufacturer's website indicates that plating machines is not one of their primary areas of expertise. In fact, I can find no reference to plating machines at all, save a single picture of the unit in the site's banner image.
I will try the 1 ohm resistor test as you suggested, but based on what I have learned so far from you and in reading this forum, this unit is not very well suited to my needs so I will probably end up returning it and looking for a better unit iwth more granular control and metering.
Maybe something like this:
http://www.contenti.com/products/plating/350-604.html
or this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/COPPER-NICKEL-TI...em170051568385