[Rab]

Hi Seanc,

Okay, Now I am learning ! Ok so my anode`s (1x 4"x8" cut in half) are nowhere near big enough for thye larger part that I was trying to plate, although I did get nice plates on part of it !

I decided as suggested by yourself to scale everything down, I had 8 times 7/16" flanged base nuts to plate, instead of doing them togeather or even four at a time, I done them all individually, I calculated surface area to be 3.5"
and with the recommended 20Ma per inch recommended in my instructions nothing happens, having had much better results working at around your recommended 100Ma per inch I plated all eight at 100Ma increase per nut
1@300Ma,
1@400Ma, and so on, the last one at
1000Ma
to see which one came out the best, It was a close call between 900Ma and 1000Ma, so I found another similar nut and plated it at 950Ma this turned out to be the best of the bunch, but still not shiney.

950Ma on my part = 271Ma per inch !!!

That has lead me to suspect that something else is badly wrong, all Amp readings as shown on digital supplys meter where checked and confirmed correct with a Fluke multimeter.

My electrolyte solution has become very murkey and brown, It used to have an orange colour, but it is getting closer to MUD coloured now, I have been thing now that it may be contaminated, I used to have a piece of 3/16 copper tube sitting accross the top of the tank as the tank bar, sometimes this bar would have been soaked in electrolyte either by my gloves, or occasionally by over inthuisiastic agitation fro my air pump splashing up on it, the copper tube corrodes and turns green, but if the tube gets wet again the green corrosion was washed off -- into my plating tank !

What is the chemical composition of the green copper corrosion?
Has this possibly caused all my problems?
Is my electolyte ruined?
Is there any way I could filter the pollutants?