Using a reverse osmosis unit in the system

[whistule]

Is it better to have water running from a reverse osmosis unit through the cleaning tank continually or to completely replace the water in the tank every so often - or perhaps a combination of both? How would you connect up the reverse osmosis unit? - with the pipe to the bottom of the tank and a overspill outlet at the top??

Any help much apprec.

[mcaswell]

I would not recommend you connect the RO unit to your tank. The concept of these systems is simply to produce 'pure' water.

So, you'll make your pure water in a seperate container, THEN add it to your plating tank.

The RO unit makes 10 gals per day, so its pretty slow, but then 70 gals per week should keep any Caswell Plating kit more than happy.

[whistule]

I really mean connecting the RO unit to the distilled water tank (used for cleaning between processes) via a pipe (making sure the RO unit was positioned above the level of the tank). Then putting an overspill on the tank so the clean water could be flowing through the tank constantly without any jiggery-pokery. It would in effect be constantly diluting the contents of the distilled water tank (assuming you have the tap to the RO unit turned on).

At the moment I never know how contaminated the distilled water tank is with chemicals dragged over from the other tanks.

[mcaswell]

No, I really don't like that idea. You are better off to dump the tank every day and put fresh in.
The RO unit would be running for less time.

[whistule]

If you put a tap in front of the RO unit it would only be running if you had the tap on.

My tanks are around 50 litres so emptying them is unfortunately a bit time consuming. I am wondering how they would do it in a commercial anodise shop where the tanks are much bigger still. They must connect a clean source of water to the tank somehow.

I think in the dicussion I have become a bit clearer as to what I am asking - should you drain the tank and then pour in clean water or can you just add some clean water each day to dilute contamates in the tank?

[whistule]

Thinking about it the best way would be to have a draining tap at the bottom of the tank and then a feed from a clean water tank running into it.