Contamination w/rinse?

[dauto]

Neophyte to plating so easy on the answers to my questions. Read manual several times before setting up tanks but may have missed the most important issue about rinsing with fresh water. Note: most forum replies indicate to use distilled water for all rinsing which will prevent cross contamination of plating tank solution. Question is (flash copper/bright copper) tanks affected by using fresh water & if so can these solutions be purged of contaminates or will solution need to be dumped?

[dadkar2]

Only use distilled water for any rinse operations prior to putting a part into a plating tank. Once you've used a rinse tank a couple of times, it must be disposed of and replenished with fresh rinse water. Conserve our environment. Don't dump used rinse water down the drain (Except rinse water from the SP Degreaser). Always pour the rinse from a plating tank back to that tank, which then tops off the plating tank and conserves our environment.

Also, don't cross-rinse; eg, don't rinse a part after nickel and then use that same rinse prior to copper. Use one rinse per chemical. Otherwise, you'll cross contaminate your solutions which will lead to major plating problems.

Ken