Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ
The authoritative public forum
for Metal Finishing since 1989
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Problems With RotaCat Copper Recovery System Danglers
Disambiguation: If your interest is actually in danglers for plating barrels, please see:
Thread 6364, "Plating barrel danglers and other maintenance problems" and
Thread 17769, "Q&A's Problems & Solutions for Plating barrel danglers"
Q. As part of our waste treatment operations we operate a "RotaCat" type barrel plater to plate copper out of copper microetchants. The problem I have is that the danglers in the barrel plate up to the point where the weight of the "seed" in the plater and the Dangler itself literally tear the end of the dangler off or destroy the cable to the dangler end. We use 1/2 diameter copper balls as seed and plate them to approximately 1" diameter before removing and replacing the seed - about a 5x weight increase in the seed. The danglers are fixed on #3 welding cable and are 3/4" x 2.5" cylindrical copper on the end.
Brad Dirkman- Fergus Falls, Minnesota
1999
A. I'm not familiar with that "RotaCat" system, but assume this is specially designed for use as an electrolytic plate-out cell; not a standard plating barrel.
It seems to me that as these seeds grow, they probably have a strong tendency to grow together, to form a welded together mass that would tear off danglers ensnarled in it. Unfortunately, all other cathode contact arrangements that I am familiar with have moving parts, some sort of casual "brushes" arrangement, that would probably plate over and freeze up in short order.
Tell us more about this electrolytic recovery cell.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
1999
A. Try a floating rod dangler. That way the media will rotate around the dangler and won't shear it off as the weight and size increase. You'll have to fill the barrel about 1/2 full for optimum contact. If the media gets too large you can always pull some out.
Jim Conner
Anoplex Software
Mabank, Texas USA
1999
Q. I just wanted to know whether only copper can be taken out from Rota cat which is dissolved in sulfuric acid or Rota cat can be used to recover metals like
nickel in hydrofluoric acid
chromium in hydrofluoric acid
iron in hydrofluoric acid
zinc in sulfuric acid
Would be delighted to have an asnwer.
Vidu Goyal- Delhi, India
2001
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