Hull Cell support
Getting answers
Hull Cell runs entirely on your device, so there is no account to recover and no server-side record of your shop. Most questions are about how the arithmetic works rather than about the app misbehaving, so the common ones are answered below.
How to reach us
contact@cozymostaccommodationsltd.store
The fastest route. Tell us the app version from Help & about, your Android version, and what you expected the number to be.
Post
COZYMOST ACCOMMODATIONS LTD
2 Frederick Street, London, England, WC1X 0ND, United Kingdom
What we can and cannot recover
We hold no copy of your data. Nothing you enter is transmitted, so if a device is lost, wiped or its storage is cleared, the only copy that exists is whatever you exported. There is no account to sign into and no backup on our side to restore from.
Export regularly. Settings → Export writes a JSON backup of everything, plus CSV of the run register, the panel log and the additions. Keep one somewhere off the phone.
Common questions
Why does the app want the jig area?
Because the jig plates too. Current does not know the difference between your work and the rack holding it, so the jig takes its share. A jig carrying a fifth of the total area draws a fifth of the current, and a load run to the part area alone comes out roughly a fifth thin. Entering the jig area is what makes the dwell time correct rather than optimistic.
Where does the dwell time come from?
Faraday's law. The charge you pass, the metal's molar mass and valence, its density and the bath's cathode efficiency give the mass deposited, which over the plated area gives the thickness. The app solves it in both directions: a target thickness gives you a dwell time, and a fixed time gives you the thickness it will actually reach.
Anodizing gives a different answer from plating. Why?
Because it is a different process. Plating deposits metal out of solution; anodizing converts the substrate into its own oxide, which grows into the aluminium as well as out of it. Faraday describes the charge but not the film, so Hull Cell uses the shop rule instead — amp-minutes per unit area, the 720 rule. Treating anodizing as a deposition is a common and expensive mistake.
Why are my additions due when the bath has not been touched for a week?
They are not, unless the bath ran. Additions in Hull Cell are owed per ampere-hour, not per calendar day, because that is how brightener and carrier are actually consumed. A bath that sat idle for a month owes nothing; one that ran flat out for two days owes what it consumed. Calendar-based dosing is the usual reason a bath drifts without anyone noticing.
I logged an addition but the amount owed did not go to zero.
Check the chemical name matches the one set on the tank. An addition of a different chemical is recorded, but it does not clear the debt for the tank's own addition — adding metal salt does not replace brightener. The tank's addition chemical is on its edit screen.
What does “bath drifted” mean on the line?
The bright range from the tank's most recent Hull cell panel no longer covers the current-density window you run the tank at. Every setting on the rectifier is what it has always been, and the work will still come out dull or burnt, because the range the bath can currently deliver has moved. It is the signal to make an addition, or to dump and remake.
Where do the current densities on a panel come from?
They are computed, not typed. The standard 267 ml Hull cell has a fixed geometry, so the current density at each read position along the panel follows from the cell current. You mark each band bright, dull or burnt; the app works out the density each band was plated at.
The tank says its efficiency is corrected. Corrected from what?
From your own measurements. Once three or more measured thicknesses exist for a tank, the app compares them against what it predicted for the same runs and uses the real figure from then on. Until then it uses the efficiency you set. It never silently assumes 100%.
A rack was run twice. Does that confuse the efficiency figure?
No. Every pass a rack made through that tank is counted toward the film the reading measured. Counting only one pass would report the bath as twice as efficient as it is, which is the kind of error that looks plausible and quietly ruins every dwell time afterwards.
Why is my yield figure blank?
Because nothing has been measured against a specification yet. Work with no job attached, or with no thickness reading, is excluded from the yield rather than counted as a failure — a shop doing plenty of “just plate it” jobs should not have its yield sunk by them.
Can I work in mils and square feet?
Yes. Settings has thickness in microns or mils, area in square decimetres or square feet, and temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. The engine is metric internally, so switching units changes only what is displayed and what a field accepts — no stored number changes meaning.
Why is there no file picker for restore?
A file-picker library and the share library cannot coexist in this build without a dependency conflict, and sharing an export matters more. Restore therefore reads a backup you paste in, or one the app wrote to its own folder. Exporting writes the file; sharing it is a separate, deliberate action.
Does it work with no signal?
Entirely. The only screen that touches the network is Settings → Privacy policy, which opens the published policy in a WebView. Every other part of the app — every record, every calculation, every chart and every export — works with the device in airplane mode.
Is Hull Cell a substitute for my process specification?
No. It is a record book and a calculator: it records your own line and does the arithmetic. It controls no equipment, makes no safety judgement, and does not replace your specification, your customer's requirements or your own testing.