Hi, hope someone can help...
I'm trying to anodise some parts off my bike, but I have run into some problems providing enough current. Firstly there is an Anode and a Cathode submerged in a water/sulphuric acid/sodium sulphate solution, for the cathode I am using a bar of aluminium and the anode is the part to be anodised.
I started by using a car charger(can do 0-8 Amps), that gave about 1-3 amps going through the part to be anodised, this was way to little current from what I’ve read, so I connected up two computer power supplies in parallel(together they can do a max of 18 Amps at 12V), and put these in series with the car charger, this boosted the car charger to about 3-5 Amps, but this is still not enough. I tried to use just the two computer power supplies on their own, but they don’t work, they only use 0.2 Amps.
I managed to get a power supply rated 10-14 Amps, I connected this in series with the two computer power supplies, the current kept rising until it reached 18 Amps and then the safety clicked in and turned the charger off. I would like to just use the computer power supplies, does anyone know why they are turning off when they are on their own but work when in series with a charger? And is there any way of getting them working on their own? I’ve also tried to use a load when using the computer power supplies, this had no effect.
The parts come out pink instead of red, but earlier I did one that was red in patches, I noticed that this time the part took more than normal current, so if I can get enough current the parts should look great.
Thanks for spending the time to read that, any help would be great.