What have I done wrong here

[Philldpapill]

I just re-read your post. You say nylon washers, but what kind of BOLT are you using? This bolt should ALWAYS be some type of insulator - never metal.

[Delirious]

Well, let's think about this logically for a moment. ............
The only logical conclusion, is that there was some kind of high current surge, in far excess of 30A, momentarily. This could be caused by plates under water BRIEFLY touching. This would cause very minimal evidence ........

Look closely at all your plates. I will bet you money that there is a very small damaged part, probably less than 1/8".

Well .... if you had bet money you would have won. Right you were. I got looking at the plates closer and there was a short caused by weld spatter. The weld spatter did not touch the opposite polarity plate as there was a small gap to start with but as plates heated it must have shorted at that point.
Anyways I reran the test after cleaning off the spatter and after 15min the wires got quite warm did not melt the shielding but too hot to touch. Still only drawing .35-.68 amps. Voltage shows a reading of 0?

[HHO BLASTER]

Well .... if you had bet money you would have won. Right you were. I got looking at the plates closer and there was a short caused by weld spatter. The weld spatter did not touch the opposite polarity plate as there was a small gap to start with but as plates heated it must have shorted at that point.
Anyways I reran the test after cleaning off the spatter and after 15min the wires got quite warm did not melt the shielding but too hot to touch. Still only drawing .35-.68 amps. Voltage shows a reading of 0?

remove the wire when its running if you get a good spark you amp meter is bad did you say you put a shunt on it

680 ma will not heat the wire unless your using thin wire what gauge is it

number #10 is the smallest you should use

voltage shows zero cannot be, must be another bad meter zero volts don't heat wire

[Philldpapill]

Well, I'll take my chances and say I'm on a roll. If you had your ammeter connected during the short, chances are you blew the ammeter and now it's giving an erroneous reading. If your wires are getting hot(14AWG), you are pulling at least 20A - probably more.

[diesel133]

15 blank wall plates from lowes, -nnnnnn+nnnnnn- will give you about 12-15 amps low 110 degree heat after an hour and about 1.5-1.8 lpm if built correctly. You need neutrals.

[Delirious]

15 blank wall plates from lowes, -nnnnnn+nnnnnn- will give you about 12-15 amps low 110 degree heat after an hour and about 1.5-1.8 lpm if built correctly. You need neutrals.

Thanks for your thoughts, I know that the amperage looked suspicious particularly when voltage shows 0. Anyways this was my 1st go at it and mostly for testing purposes. I have now modified my setup and put a fused end on the battery plus side, started with a 10amp then 15 and last at 20 amp fuse which ran fine for some 20 min. but did not produce much gas. I have not built anything to measure the output yet to compare output from different plate configurations.
Question, if positive plates produce oxygen and negative hydrogen what do neutral plates do?
Thanks for the help.

[Philldpapill]

"Positive" plates are called an anode. These suck electrons off of the OH- in the water. Negative plates force electrons on to the H+ ions in the water. When you have a neutral plate, one side of the plate will look like more negative(this side would be facing a positive plate, normally). Since the plate "looks" negative, it will dump electrons into the water, and act like a negative plate. Those electrons have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the other side of the plate. This other side looks more negative, and will suck electrons off the water in order to feed the other side, the negative side.

For a "neutral" plate to do it's job, however, you need to take care to ensure that there isn't any water path for the electricity to flow through. Due to some more complicated chemistry reasons, the voltage it takes to strip an electron at a plate, is higher than what it takes to allow electrons to flow through the water. In other words, the saying is true - "Electricity will flow through the path of least resistance". For this reason, you need to make sure that the neutral plate acts as a complete barrier to the water/electrolyte. In other words, if water can flow from the + side to the - side of the neutral plate, it's not a neutral plate; it's extra weight and nothing more.

[HHOmer]

Being a newb at this and still picking the forums brains, I had the why can't you just -+-+-+-+ etc. thought too. And after not to much reading I came to understand that you could do it but it would better serve you as a dirty water dog cooker. Guess there was some tru-dat in dat.