Silvertron, electrodes and cleaning

[chimpta]

New to the Silvertron V3 and have a few questions.  I am using washing soda and karo according to the instructions and also have a magnetic stirrer/heater.  I have the silver bullion on the positive/red and silver wire on the negative/black.  So far I have only made 20 ppm.  Settings for 1 liter are 15 ma, 20 ppm, 1 liter.  I have to push the cathode/black way down to get to just above 10V.  Does having to push the cathode way down sound right?  Not how I see it done on the Earthclinic youtube.  I also found out afterwards that I may be starting with water that is only around 70F.  Maybe I should warm it up a bit before starting anything?  It runs around 19 minutes.  I does turn very light gold after the addition of karo and heating as instructed but not sure if it should be a bit darker.  How does all this sound?

One other question.  I do want to move onto 1 liter of 320 ppm and am not looking forward to torching the bullion every 30 minutes.  Is it alright to have the cathode also be a bullion and just switching the polarity every 30 minutes?  Could that be a substitute for flaming the anode bullion?  If so would that change anything else?

[wgpeters]

You lift the cathode (black/negative) higher in the water to increase voltage, not put it down farther.  10 volts is a minumum voltage, anything above is ok.  Try for 20 volts.  Higher than 20 wont hurt the quality, but it might make it impossible for the ST to reach full current.  This would lengthen the run time, but not affect the calibration (ppm).

Using a one ounce electrode for the negative doesnt work very well because you won't be able to get the voltage up.

As a general rule of thumb, increase the anode, and use the minimum cathode to adjust voltage.

[SaltyCornflakes]

If you used two pieces of silver and alternated current in intervals, you would just get two blackened pieces, albeit they'd collect oxide at half the speed. There are some generator plans floating around the net which have this feature, supposedly as a way to eliminate silver wisps. I'm not convinced this makes sense unless you never stir.

Also I'm not 100% sure if this applies to silver, but having oxide on the cathode may be problematic and result in a less clean product. This happened with me and CG. Now I always keep the cathode spotless, whichever metal it is.