I will bring this from the dead as this was the most intelligent thread on the subject on the web. I have some tough questions that no one asked before or is simply unaware of.
Doing electrolysis is great, especially if you are going to oil the parts afterwards. What is missed, or unknown to most is how to treat that cleaned off metal if it is designed for paint.
When I remove parts from electrolysis process they get rusted super fast, and they have magnetite on them. You can't paint anything over those 2. TAMCO 2k epoxy (which is what I use and what is on F22 Raptor and every Boeing) will fail on rust, magnetite (since it comes off, and I'm not sure chemically if it would even work), phosphoric acid (metal prep), and anything that is not pure metal, or have neutral PH. That goes for every paint and not just my paint, every paint will fail.
I noticed people are not aware of the above, and they paint right over Metal Prep, and etc. They don't even read their paint tech sheets fully. So here are my questions:
1. How to use electrolysis without producing magnetite, or very little of it? Maybe super slowed down process over long period of time? If so, how to slow it down?
2. For those that paint after electrolysis, do you have any tricks? I simply put the parts into my blasting machine and I blast with either glass, steel, or whatever is appropriate. That removes flash rust, and magnetite, and then I'm ready to paint.
3. Silly question. Once in a while when I turn off electrolysis process, I am not able to restart it, unless I drain the whole thing and recreated the solution from the beginning. What is happening chemically to my solution?
I understand there is no perfect answer (maybe laser) to rust removal, as even blasting does not fully remove rust, the "seeds" of rust are actually pushed into the holes and the rust comes back, so I'm not expecting too much, just trying to see if someone came up with an interesting trick. Electrolysis does remove more rust than blasting in theory, but the after removal rust flash undoes the gains.
Doing electrolysis is great, especially if you are going to oil the parts afterwards. What is missed, or unknown to most is how to treat that cleaned off metal if it is designed for paint.
When I remove parts from electrolysis process they get rusted super fast, and they have magnetite on them. You can't paint anything over those 2. TAMCO 2k epoxy (which is what I use and what is on F22 Raptor and every Boeing) will fail on rust, magnetite (since it comes off, and I'm not sure chemically if it would even work), phosphoric acid (metal prep), and anything that is not pure metal, or have neutral PH. That goes for every paint and not just my paint, every paint will fail.
I noticed people are not aware of the above, and they paint right over Metal Prep, and etc. They don't even read their paint tech sheets fully. So here are my questions:
1. How to use electrolysis without producing magnetite, or very little of it? Maybe super slowed down process over long period of time? If so, how to slow it down?
2. For those that paint after electrolysis, do you have any tricks? I simply put the parts into my blasting machine and I blast with either glass, steel, or whatever is appropriate. That removes flash rust, and magnetite, and then I'm ready to paint.
3. Silly question. Once in a while when I turn off electrolysis process, I am not able to restart it, unless I drain the whole thing and recreated the solution from the beginning. What is happening chemically to my solution?
I understand there is no perfect answer (maybe laser) to rust removal, as even blasting does not fully remove rust, the "seeds" of rust are actually pushed into the holes and the rust comes back, so I'm not expecting too much, just trying to see if someone came up with an interesting trick. Electrolysis does remove more rust than blasting in theory, but the after removal rust flash undoes the gains.