Bubbles

[boxgods]

I read in another older thread where a gentleman was using a 3/8" or 1/4" air line from his compressor and basically draping it into his copy chrome plating tank with the regulator on his compressor set as low as it would go.

His findings were that LARGER air bubbles were better then the smaller ones generated by the fish tank style air pumps for agitation, and generated far less splash. I would also like to do this but I can't tie my compressor up for hours at a time.

I was wondering if any of you doing higher volume plating had tried one of the airbrush compressors like the Model TC-09 which can deliver 1.5 CFM@55 PSI and likely double or triple that at a more reasonable (for our purposes) 10 PSI?

I was going to build simple frames out of 1/2" PVC with say 1/8" holes drilled at 30 degrees along the arms and place them on the bottom of the tanks.

Any thoughts?

[tbreaden]

Yes 1/2" pvc works great but you want to to use much smaller drill bit. You can always go up in size. You can adjust accordingly. It depends on your size of tank, and the size of parts plating. Do not get the pvc to close to the sides near your anodes. Because the bubbles will get behind them and make them float out. You need the the bubbles to flow on and around your work. I use a 4hp Craftsman oiless compressor 20gal tank. It will run 40 gal copy chrome, flash copper, and acid copper at once. I set the compressor at 20 psi and have shut off valves at the baths to adjust air. Todd

[boxgods]

Any guesstimate of how many CFM your moving for three 40 gallon tanks? How often does the compressor cycle on? 20 PSI will give me 3 CFM on one of the little airbrush compressors and they are very quiet, and under $150 for a quality 5,000 hour model. My yanks will all be 6-10 gallon and I will usually only be running one at a time--2 at most.

I guess for $150 I can try it and see. If it is not enough air I always have a nice little painting compressor lol.

[tbreaden]

I belive the compressor your talking about will work fine for one tank of that size. Just drill the holes in the pvc very small. Todd