power source

[93FATBOY]

I want to set up the battery charger to battery setup. Im not an electrical engineer and the local Radio Shack is of no help. Im going with this set up because I already have the charger ( has 2 , 6 and 10 amp modes)and battery ( motorcycle battery ) just not sure how the rest of the set up should go and what components I need.The manual is helpful yes but I have no clue what a rheostat does or what type of rheostat I need .From what common sense is telling me is that I need to be able to control the amps...Im trying to keep the setup as simple as possible for now.Any help would be appreciated .

[pjstein]

You really need to look at the manual. The amperage depends on the surface area you want to plate and what you are using to plate with. I've been doing copycad for awhile now and I use a 6 volt battery and control the amperage with small light bulbs. Copycad takes very little power, about .025 amps per square inch so the 6 volt system works well. I just add or subtract light bulbs to increase or decrease my amperage. As far as the battery charger goes, I have one hooked up to the battery and charging and still connect the battery to the plating tank. I bought a really cheap amp meter to check if the setup was really working and it does. If you are going to do chrome you are going to need 1 amp per 1 square inch. Thats forty times more than copycad. In that case light bulbs won't do you much good.

[jimcarry]

remember with copy chrome use 1 amp per 32 sq inches
so if your part is say 56 sq inches
you would tak your sq inches 56 devided by 32 the answer is 1.75 amps allways round down not up in this case i would use 1.5 amps to plate this piece

[shawnkloker]

I found out the hard way that too much current is bad.I am using a 5 amp power supply with a built in amp and volt gauge.

[mcaswell]

See the video/tutorial on the webpage on controlling the power with light bulbs