Test of Plating Rectifiers

[MKinnes]

Could anyone familiar with identifying losses in current (leakage) in a high current (6000-9000) amps 12 volt dc plating rectifier offer any advice and/or any particulary usefull methods of identifying these losses.

 

[mdshunk]

I worked in a plating plant for a long time. Most of the "losses" were normally due to corroded connectors in or near the baths. Normally, you'll have paralleled conductors, so I would amprobe each conductor in the paralleled bundle to find the one's with significantly different amp draw than the mean, and visually examine those conductors. Quite often, they'll have actually wicked plating solution back into the cable, and it sometimes would rot off from inside.

If the rectifier is suspect, I generally just hooked it up to a calibrated load cell, and compared my shunt readings with the rectifier's front panel readout. If they matched reasonably well, all was good. 99.99% of the time the trouble is in the leads or the terminals.