In past couple days I’ve been bugging Veronika where all that stuff is, getting bit nervous about not having a backup plan for boys for this Thursday (our no-screen day – Thanks Tam!). Australian Post had to hear my cries as the graphite sheet arrived yesterday.
.. followed by the Potassium Hydroxide today.
I couldn’t resist and on our way back from school we’ve grabbed the last part – the Foldback Clips!
Sebi took some measurements of the graphite block so we can make holes in the lid.
Meanwhile I’ve chicken out and covered balloon seams with another layer of Mylar to be sure that we minimize any potential leaks. Picture below shows one of corners where patches meet. Lesson learned here – less glue the better! I honestly think that we are getting better in this and I still could put my fingers away from each other afterwards. 😀
After proper measurement we’ve drilled holes. Actually we’ve tried to use the soldering pipe first, but that didn’t seem to be doing right job. Here is Sebi cleaning holes and adjusting them for the Graphite.
First Graphite sheet is in!
Well, as per my aim to stay on minimal budget, I’ve got just one, what I see as a mistake now. Two sheets would be much better. Now we had to cut the one we had in a half. If you wonder how one cuts a sheet of Graphite – Google pointed me to Quora which a bit surprisingly suggested to do it with the knife!
I’ve actually learned that Graphite has very low hardness. On the Mohs scale Graphite actually has value between 1-2 which relates it to Gypsum. To put it in another context – diamonds have #10. It is not that surprising when one things about it, still it took about 10 minutes to chew it through with my work-knife.
Following pictures just show the final assembly where you can also see those fold-back clips in action – holding the graphite and being prepared to connect to PSU. There are also holes drilled (hopefully) for some Hydrogen exhaust + nozzle.
There are still few things to be done before we’ll have another go with hydrogen generation:
– Electrodes still need to be glued in with the hot-glue gun
– Fold-back clips need to be sanded off so they can properly serve as conductors between electrodes and the PSU
– And finally we need to prepare electrolyte
If nothing – I like how it looks now! 😀
