Thick plates & thin gaps

[Little Motor]

Thanks for your help in a previous thread, Bob.

In my limited research, Ive come up with the idea
that plates ideally should be fairly thick and the gaps between them
very small. And the plates perfectly parallel.
My reasoning is making the plates thicker reduces resistance.
And the gap as tiny as possible allows greater transfer of current through the water.
Although I guess there would be a point where close is too close.
Perfectly parallel plates makes better use of the entire plate area.
What is your opinion on this?

[Bob]

I agree completely !
I never really thought about the plates being thicker would lower resistance but I'm sure it would (to a certain extent)
  if you compared 1/8" thick plates to say 0.010" thick plates I amagon the resistance would be only slightly higher in the thin plates....when measuring with a VTOM however when pumping a bunch of Amps through them the difference would more than likely amount to allot of resistance indeed.
 So that makes sense to me .... thicker is better for another reason too and that is less warp age....
 you mentioned perfectly parallel plates and that is so very true ! if you look at capacitance between 2 plates that are not perfectly parallel the capacitance value drops extremely because the electrons will pool at the closest point and disregard the rest of the plate.... I suspect the same thing will happen in our cells if the plates are not parallel with each other and the output will suffer because of it!
....
Most people are reluctant to try "Really Close" plate spacing, but that is one of the best ways to get high output that I know of... Randy and I have made cells with 0.010" spacing
and 0.015" spacing  with great results...
  Most people get hung up on the idea that bubbles will get trapped between the plates if their too close but this isn't the case as far as I can tell... at least at the 0.010" spacing it certainly isn't a problem....However it is important to arrange the plates in such a way so their edges are UP not horizontal so the bubbles can escape quickly....the bubbles come off the plates in a CLOUD of very very tiny bubbles they only get bigger as they "gang up" on their way to the surface.
...
so if you made a cell with 1/16"or 1/8" thick plates and placed them perfectly parallel at say 0.025" I don't see how you could loose !
....
square plates ...or actually any plates are hard to keep perfectly parallel ....
but a little trick makes it quite easy.... when you are sure of the spacing (after the bolts are all tight) you can insert a small square or paper punch dot of insulation material between the plates of the right thickness....
although this takes away a bit from the surface area of the plates, its worth it in my mind, to keep the plates parallel...
 even on something as small as the "Randy Cell" I have found on one of my cells that the
washers are NOT parallel.... usually they are but for some reason on this one cell they are not.... so on the tight side I slipped in slivers of insulation material to straighten them up... ...
 however I noticed after using that cell that half of the little wedges were gone when I opened it up for inspection months later.... so its possible that it is a good idea to glue them in or the expansion and contraction of the metal will make them work loose and fall out.
....
Bob....

[Little Motor]

Plate stainless has a rolled appearance which probably varies in thickness along its length.
So I'm wondering if each side of the plate was milled to provide a perfectly
flat and parallel sides this would have to be an advantage.
But do you think that the open grain of a machined finish as opposed to the
smooth closed grain of its natural finish be superior in producing the gas?
Although debris would probably attach itself more readily to a machined finish?

[Manta]

A machined or scratched finish can greatly increase the surface area of the plate.  Much to be desired.

Manta

[Bob]

Little  Motor:
here we are bordering on the rediculas... I hope you don't take this wrong but there are EXTREAMS to everything ! and Machineing a set of plates to make them SUPER PERFECTLY FLAT
to me is taking it to its far extreams, and is not worth the trouble.... How do I know this ? well technically I don't, but I am drawing from what I know about Capacitance and Hydroxy cells.... the plates in a Hydroxy cell can be UN parallel and still work fine
...I bet dollars to donuts you could measure every cell in exhistance and never find one that the plates ARE parallel... some would be closer than others obviously, but the point is they work very well even if they are off a bit.
 Capacitors are much the same way.... but Like Hydroxy Cells the closer to being Perfect they are the better they work. but is it worth the hassle ? I seriously doubt it
machining the surface is better than taking course sandpaper to them , no doubt... but is it that much better ?  WHO KNOWS!?!?!?!   the idea is to not have a Smooth surface
and I've seen a milled surface that I could see myself in right off the mill ! so
the idea is relative to the machine, the operator, and the material milled....
not all Milled surfaces are the same.
...
in all Seriousness, having the plates Un parallel by a small amount isn't going to matter that much...  for instance, that cell I was telling you about that I wedged in insulation materiel... I could put a .020 feeler gauge in one side and couldn't get it in on the other side at all...90deg. apart... yet it made 2LPM like the other 2 cells did. so I called it good even though it wasn't PERFECT !
....
 Perfection usually has little place in building things, because technically, perfection cannot be obtained...
 the closer you are to perfection the better off you are, but you must know when to say ,"that's close enough!" or you will spend all your time trying to make something PERFECT and never get on to the next step.
....
 Each person has their own "Perfectionist Streak" in them.... and some suppress it better than others!.... like myself... I tend to say "that's close enough" too soon some times....<GRIN> ...so you can take the "Relaxed approach" too far too ! HAHAHA!
....
But this is One subject that I think previous examples prove my point.
...
 No sense in going to all that trouble... just build the cell out of normal Stainless steel plates, rough up the surface with sand paper and call it good enough.
TRY to get the plates Parallel... try hard to get them very close... if need be use wedges to accomplish it... if you can get them reasonably close to being parallel thats good enough....
 ...
you could get the dial Micrometers out and take it all the way to the hundredths of thousandths of an inch.... but in reality its not worth the gain for the time spent!
 because the difference in OUTPUT is so small that you'll never notice anyway.
... as I said my one cell was NOTICEABLY out of parallel (I think the bolts were bent!)
but it preformed as good as the other cells anyway.... so what the heck !
...(there was probably a measurable difference in the output but I never noticed it...i was using the "Bottle in the bucket" method and timing the duration on my wrist watch)
so all in all it was again "close enough fer Me !" LOL
...
Hope that helps !
...
Bob.....