The process. Mix up in a plastic container washing soda and warm water( about 75-100 grams per litre)
Clean up one end of the electrode( I use a piece of rebar) The positive lead goes to the end of this. Don’ t submerge the charger clamp, as it will get eroded.
The rusty work must be submerged, and the negative lead goes to this. You can submerge this clamp without problems. You might need to scrape off a little rust to get a good contact.
Make sure the rusty part and electrode cannot slip and touch each other.
Switch on the charger. If the current is too high on the chargers meter there are a number of things you can do to reduce it;
• Increase the distance between the rusty part and the electrode.
• Dilute the washing soda solution by adding more water
• if you have a 6 / 12 volt charger, change it to the 6 volt setting
If it’ s working OK, bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen will come off the electrodes. The time to clean a part will depend on the current, the area of the rusty part and just how rusty it is. Keep checking it, but I find 1 – 8 hours is typical
Then use fresh water, a plastic or maybe a wire brush to clean it up, then oil or wax it, or the rust starts all over again, and all too quickly!
So, how does it work? Well in Picture top right you can see an old rusty lathe tool rest, after 3 hours in the bath, it comes up like Picture lower right.
One warning, it is possible that metal cleaned this way may be subject to hydrogen embrittlement. This has never worried me, but be aware that it can cause cracking in some high-strength steels, For instance it would be unwise to de-rust, say, critical axle parts this way.
Now, for a brief mention of some higher tech stuff.
If you really want to get into a fancy RC system, that is completely open source, meaning you can fiddle with all aspects of the hardware and software take a look at this site. It’ s mighty interesting, but not for the faint of heart. http:// www. os-rc. com / en /
And here’ s a puzzle. A while ago, and in anticipation of the recently arrived Digital TV switchover I purchased a TiVo recorder. I’ m very pleased with it, it does all that I want with dual tuners, a massive recorder built-in, all for a very reasonable cost in a sale. Furthermore the manual has obviously been written by a person who speaks English as a first language, and a lot of thought has gone into the human-machine
interface. None of this“ unkwon application layer error. Please be waiting to be rebooting the keybaords”
However, in the past couple of months, the remote has become dodgy, and a quick look around Google showed this is a common enough problem, despite the retailer proclaiming“ Oh WE haven’ t heard of that!” There were several theories:- too much sunlight, IR off other devices, or CFL lamps, or this and that. None proved to be the problem. I was a little lost until a couple posted that all one has to do, was to reverse the batteries for a couple of seconds, then all will be well.
Very dodgy advice I thought, but in desperation I tried it, and guess what, it works! I’ m not really certain why, but have a few ideas. But it’ s just as well our car computer, our RC transmitter, or medical electronics, or cellphones, or whatever else in our weird, wired and digital world does not require this funky chicken treatment! I’ m off to try to learn why. See you all next issue.