A shirley PSU Story
Over the last few days, I've been playing around using one of shirley's power supplies for removing rust on some old tools, via electrolysis in a 5gal bucket..
I started with a power supply set 24V and 15 amps Max. My first 'tool' I'm trying this out on is a really old railroad spike and of course it's VERY rusty. I'm using plain steel annealed wire to suspend the railroad spike into the solution and the end coming out of the water is connected to the anode. For my sacrificial steel. I have a couple pieces of angle iron wired together and connected to the cathode.
Once underway, I noticed slowly the current started to climb from about 7 amps and started to approach the limit of 15. What I didn't expect or understand is the voltage starting to fall? After a while, I reduced the current limit to 8 amps and then 4A. And the voltage fell further?
The rust is definitely coming off the railroad spike. I can see that. I guess I want to know the ’why’ as to what I observed above.