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Potassium permanganate problems

At my printed circuit board shop we use a potassium permanganate ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] bath to basically clean epoxy off of printed circuit boards before they are to be plated with copper. Today, when a worker ran a board through the bath it came out with a thick, paint like substance on the boards. I ran tests on the bath to make sure it was up to spec and it was...by-product concentration was not found to be higher than normal. After inspection of the bath we discovered that the basket anodes in the bath had been cut and worn away, and found that no amperage was flowing though them.

My question is: would this be the reason for the 'sludge' left on the boards...and do you have any suggestions for steps we should take in order to remedy this situation?

Chris Huber
- New York
2001