rust removal with a battery charger

[fractal]

There was a thread on this on tbn a year or so ago. I read it with interest and tried it. It worked great. The pictorial report I wrote then is at http://www.fractured.org/rust/ if you are interested.

In summary, it works.

 

[Junkman]

I have this article about rust bookmarked and your post reminded me of it.... good article to read about rust. .

Here is another variant of the process that I have also saved from another site, but at this point, I don't remember which one it is. I did a copy and paste and e mailed it to myself a couple of years ago.

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I have used this method many times and it works great. To do this you need two equal sized stainless steel plates, they should be equal or greater than the surface area of the parts you are going to derust. Next, submerge these plats completely in a bucket filled with a water-baking soda mixture. I have forgotten what the mixture is so i will look it up and post it later. The faces of the plates should face each other, the part to derust will be hung between the plates in the solution(also submerged). Now connect the positive terminal to the to BOTH plates and the negative terminal to the part to be derusted. This method works great and it won't harm a battery charger. If I missed anything hopefully someone will point it out.

Response by another:

I use this method too and it works great. No damage to the good metal and all of the rust is toast. You don't need SS plates, just one anode will do. I use stainless hardware cloth. Get a pair of jumper cables to hook to this thing so you don't ruin the clamps on your battery charger because the positive clamp will corrode like crazy. I ended up cutting it off and putting a copper lug on it and then bolting it to the hardware cloth with a stainless bolt and nut. That took care of it for good. The negative clamp will stay real clean. )</font>

 

[mrcaptainbob]

Would it be okay to use a stainless tub? Or does it degrade, too and would end up with holes?

 

[Junkman]

I think that a lot would depend on the quality of the stainless steel. I was also thinking the same using a old stainless steel sink...

 

[ns_in_tex]

If you had a solid stainless tub, would you not have to insulate the part being derusted from touching the tub?
Otherwise it would seem to me, it would short out the battery charger.

I was thinking, plastic bucket, round stainloess inner liner. Let the part sit on the plastic bottom (not touching the sides.

I suppose you could sit a plastic platform in the bottom of a stainless tub & do the same thing.

 

[DougM]

Could I set this up to a tractor and it would never Rust ??

DougM /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Junkman]

You are supposed to suspend the part that is being de-rusted. If any part of the part is touching the plastic pail, then that pare of the part isn't going to de-rust.

 

[mrcaptainbob]

Since it needs to be a 'line-of-sight', I was also thinking of a stainless sink with the 'part' suspended in the liquid. Thanks for that caution about stainless quality, Junkman. Attaching a positive to the outside would be a snap, of coarse. But I wonder about the eventual deterioration of the stainless. Are you suggesting that it would not deteriorate?

 

[Fungus]

It works great! Here’s my bucket setup ( <font color="blue">see here</font> ).

I bought an old universal bench grinder for $100 that needed some serious attention. After disassembly and clean-up using this method this is the end result ( <font color="blue">see here </font>). Works perfectly now.

It doesn’t matter what you use for electrodes. They just need to be conductive. The actual electron flow is coming off the part being cleaned. This is what breaks the rust off.

I happen to have a bunch of SS bars lying around so that’s what I use. I use old CU wire to hang my parts into the solution (see picture above). What does happen is the positive electrode becomes crusted with rust from your part. You need to keep this clean to maintain performance.

Also, the process tends to be line of sight between the part being cleaned and the positive electrode. Sometimes you need to rearrange the electrodes to get complete coverage.

Oh yeah, I have 24V supply – it really kicks ****…

 

[SPIKER]

FUNGUS: when you said bench grinder that means a little motor with wheels on each end to me! lol. that is a tooling grinder as we call em around here and whhoo what a nice looking one! great job.

Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif