Racking large rings for sulfuric Acid Anodising

A. Hi, Jimmy. If you owned a jobshop with 4 ft tanks, I think it would be fine to take the job and rack the parts vertically; it's certainly eminently doable. But when you are custom designing a line for particular parts, fitness to purpose is a key issue and I don't think you should try shortcuts based on real estate usage. You know which is the best way to rack these parts for the best draining, minimum cross contamination, freedom from gas accumulation, consistent agitation, and good access for auxiliary cathodes if necessary. Symmetry is beautiful and nature will punish you in ways that are hard to predict if you ignore it :-)

If you take the shortcut you might spend the rest of your career there saying: "Boy, it would have been so much easier if . . ." :-)

Regards,

A. Another item to consider is where can you have contact points? The bottom , ID or OD.
Everything else the same, I would put it into the tanks in the horizontal direction, IE: OD vertical. If your power supply was large enough, you could build a rack that would allow for doing 2 parts at a time. This stuff has to be heavy, so I would run it 1 at a time.

In the USA, the tanks would have to be elevated or a good guard rail put up between the operator and the part, even if it is automated.

Also, in the USA, I preferred to use rotationally molded tanks of PP for the hot tanks and PE for the rest. I have used SS box beams for some tank support and painted 2 x 4 wood for others. The hot tanks also had painted 1/2" plywood walls for additional support when the tank was large and nearing allowable temperatures.
Reason, they worked well and were a LOT cheaper than any other tank. (and I had a vendor that gave me great price breaks on large orders)

A. Jimmy

With racking the part horizontally, you could use air agitation. If racking vertically, air agitation will not be effective on the outer upper half. Mechanical agitation would work if the part was vertical. Something else to consider.