Now how do we get the power into our boxes. Well my old design was downright dangerous. It used 2
wires coming in from the top (in the gas) and reached down to the 2 end-plates where it delivered the power. At about 7 amps
my wires got hot enough to melt the top of the box where they were poking through. This caused a leak which I heard and
likely saved me from a very ugly and potentially dangerous problem. Namely, HOT metal in a very explosive gas.
These new boxes will deliver the power through the sides where they will be 100% submerged in the liquid. They will be
heavy gauge 3/8 inch threaded #316 stainless rod so they will be able to handle massive amperage. The threaded rods will be
sealed on the sides of the box with groments (thanks to Bill) that can take hundreds of PSI without leaking. We will only
be operating up to about 30 psi so no danger of leakage there. The really cool part of this electrical delivery system starts
here. Bill was worried about expansion as the box warmed up. He didn't want the box to crack due to the 3/8th inch threaded
rod being rigidly stuck to the plates inside. We thought about this one for a while and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.
We'll just have to have floating end plates!! --Eh? Come again you say?
Picture this. A plate 5.5 x 6 with a #316 stainless 3/8th inch nut welded smack dab in the middle. Send your threaded rod through the
side of the box and screw it into the nut, so it's tight against the plate at the back of the nut. Now you have a solid
electrical connection from the rod to that end plate. The end plate is cut 6 inches high by 5.5 wide so it DOES NOT fit into
the slits of the plate spacer inserts. No it simply stands there right next to the first plate that is actually in the first
set of slits in the series. If the box expands a bit, no matter, that plate is just "floating" under water and not fixed to
anything but the threaded 3/8th rod. So the power will come in through these end rods, through the sides of the box and
travel to the floating plates. These floating plates will simply transfer the voltage to the first "sealed" plate on each
end of the box. The first sealed plate on each end is the first plate that is in the slits. To add plates you simply adjust
one of the threaded rods to a new position so that the floating plate will allow room for more or less plates, depending on
what you're doing at the time. We may end up using non-threaded rods and just threading the end of each rod that will screw
into the plate, so that we can then get super-fine adjustment of the floating plate spacing as this will likely be very important and definitely a critical
adjustment to make.
So let's summarize. We have submerged rods delivering power to 2 submerged "floating" end plates, which will then deliver
the power to the 2 real end plates in the series of cells. The cells (just as in my old box) will be filled nearly to the top
of the metal (6 inches high) but not over the top. This forces the electricity to travel from plate to water, plate, water,
and so-forth until it's migrated through all of the plates in the series. This is how you get your voltage division. If you
filled the water above the 6 inch mark, the electricity would simply travel from floating plate 1 to floating plate 2 and
never be forced through all of the other cells. In other words you'd pop your breaker since you'd instantly draw a TON of
amps :)
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