Quote Originally Posted by piper184 View Post
Been researching this a little today as college chem classes were more than 40 years ago. It seems I have forgotten a lot.
Anyway, putting stainless at the anode (+) will cause chrome to leach out of the stainless steel. It seems you need a Ph down around 1 and it can form as trivalent or hexavalent. The first being harmless and the second being a really nasty poison. Once in solution though, you can reverse the process and deposit it back onto the cathode (-) although I don't quite understand which version is being deposited. It seems a lot depends on the electrolytic solution and the base metals.
I do remember a lot of shops that did chrome plating were put out of business when they tightened up the regulations
So if the chrome is leached from the Positive anode then one has to assume that deposition is occurring at the negative cathode. I would think that the parts needing plating would be attached and not another piece of stainless. A better explanation is clearly needed.