16 Wall Plate Dry Cell Fail Very little Production

[lhazleton]

Good to see that you're making progress! By doing everything yourself, you'll learn quite a bit. For a first try, you're doing nicely.
After you get the reactor up & running, and then see all of the rust & gunk that the cheap plates make, it'll be time to move on. Just don't be discouraged, as we've all been there. It's how we learn: the less you put into it, the less you'll get out of it.
Two things to change on your next build:
1) Cross-sand both sides of each plate (unless you're able to Media Blast). You don't want the plates polished.
2) Keep your gas holes lined up, but stagger the holes for the ecectrolyte flow. These should be at about 4&8 O'clock (roughly) on alternate plates. You want the E/lyte holes as far away from each other as possible. This will help against current leakage.
Keep up the good work & continue posting results!

[(D3F0)]

I meant to say that the plate were not polished they were just equally scratched up using the wire wheel. thanks for the advice though. I finished the dry cell I was going to post it all this morning but it was 4am I had to go to bed. So here is the rest.



That old drill is truly dieing but here is a closer look at the tap thing I hoenstly don't even know what it really is but it worked sort of..



I just went through the whole board and backed off slowly it did a big thread the only problem was that the thread did not match exactly to
the 90 degree barbs I had to screw on later so it was really hard to get them to actually screw in.



After I had the holes all threaded up I started to clean up the plates like crazy. First i cleaned them with regular dishwasher soap. Then I washed them off with tap water, then I washed them off in purified water. Last I wiped them down really good with Alcohol I hope i didn't mess this process up I used this bottle.



I let the plates dry on a towel for about 30 mins they looked pretty good here is what they looked like before i started putting everything together.

[(D3F0)]

cleaning these plates is such a pain haha once i let them dry I started to assemble used 2 gaskets so my spacing is .080 inches.



The bolts have no insulation on them because what I did was torque them all down with none,
after that i took each one and put a piece of heat shrink over it. Put the bolt back in and then
I had to compressed it all together



I only used 3 inch bolts Almost ran out of room just to get the board on I had to squeeze the crap out of the
the cell and so that the wing nuts could grab on to the thread.



I know that my Barbs don't even look like they are in but its because I have to get a matching thread I could not find one they are in
about a 1/4 inch on each side. Just a 1/4 inch and I cant even move them anymore and it seems to be sealing really good.

[(D3F0)]

Here are a couple more pictures of what the dry cell looked like when i was done. Hopefully this will do lot
better than the last one. I tried to listen to all the advice that I got and it looks much better my configuration is
+NNNNN-NNNNN+NNNNN-

Here is a front view you can see how much smaller my gaskets are now trough the cutting board
It has much more surface area you guys were right the gaskets made a lot more sense at half the
size just look at the difference



Next is a top view of how the board is holding up to a lot of compression it is still bending
just a little bit but I'm fine with that because I would of def broke the Lexan by now
and that stuff is 250 X stronger than glass.



And last here is a side view of the cell the bolt looks like it is all corroded but that is
just left over corrosion from the last one I made all my hardware on that cell is
stainless steel those threads can be cleaned off with my finger. The reason I didn't do that yet
it because I finished this at 3:30 AM.

[(D3F0)]

I am not happy with the seal of my cell and the bend of my cutting board. I thought it was thicker, the board i have is only 5/16 thick I need 1/2 inch and longer bolts with bigger washers. When i blow through this with my mouth while closing the other side i get a tiny little leak. That is really small and almost whistles. So today I am going to get bigger washers, Bigger bolts, a 1/4 inch tap, a 1/2 inch cutting board and a couple more 90 degree elbows. Hopefully this will seal perfectly once I work out these little bugs.

[lhazleton]

Don't get disappointed with your work! You're in the early stages of the "learning-curve" as such. After you've got a couple of grand and hundreds of hours into developing your system, you can ***** about things not being perfect.
If I were you, I'd get another cutting board, cut it the same & double-up on the endplates. To get mine so it won't bend, I did just that plus added 1/8" steel to the outsides, cut the same as the endplates. Works fine.
You may also wish to add some more bolts around the perimeter.
Judging by the photo's, at least 1 more in the top & bottom centers would help.
For a first build, you're doing very well & we're all pulling for ya!
By the way, the thing that you were using to cut threads is a set-screw.
If you buy a tap, make sure that it's for NPT threads! A normal tap doesn't have a taper & sealing it will be nearly impossible.

[(D3F0)]

Yea true but dam a couple grand! I'm only a high school student here =0 later I am going to get the stuff but I should have a picture of the cell all put together with the reservoir tonight. That's a good idea bout adding the steel too and yea i plan on getting some 4 inch bolts instead and I am gonna use 2 more too add more of an equal pressure all around. Thanks for telling me what that screw was too I couldn't think of its name haha

[koya1893]

D3, I have to hand to you, you are presistant in getting a cell working. One thing I should have noticed in the early stage: the bolts you're using, the wing nuts are hard to hold to get good torque and it looks like the screw head is "straight slot". I recommend getting some bolts with "X" heads and regular "X" nuts so you can use a two wrench or socket to tighten your cell.

Second: when you are bolting the cell using just the outer parimeter instead of going through the plates itself you need to keep the bolts as close as you can to the outer perimeter of the plates. Heading to the gym, I will send you a photo to show what I am talking about so you can see. It will prevent the end plates from bowing enough not to cause the cell to leak.

[(D3F0)]

Haha you can never give up on something as intense as HHO and thanks for response i actually just got back from home depot I had the same exact though so before reading your post I already started to redo the holes and the bolts no more wing nuts and different bolt pattern with 16 bolts instead of 12 for more equal pressure and I will post a couple pics in a little bit when I am finished rebuilding the cell.

[koya1893]

Well done. I don't have a fancy program to illustrate what I was talking about so I came up with something that will do. The large white circle with the black dot inside represent how the washer will apply pressure on your plates. The distance between the edge of the plates and the bolts is close, about 1/16 that way the washer will put more pressure on the plates and gasket. I know you like using big bolts, I use #10-20 SS screws on my cell, with the phillips head and 3/8 nuts with lock washer.

Here's a close up of one of my cell installed a Honda Pilot. The gasket I used for my smaller cell is the "orange" gasket you can get a lowes. It is a 6" X 6" 1/8 thick or the 1/16 thick. The 1/8 I like because you can really torque down the screws down to make use the cell will not leak.