convenience and could be eliminated if desired in order to complete the preparation of separator plate for a fuel cell it is usually necessary to complete various additional steps e g cutting strips of the sheet article from the coiled band and shaping the cut strip e g to produce channels for gaseous reactants passing through the cell the cutting and stamping can of course be achieved in a single step this is illustrated in simplified schematic form in fig1 where a coil 14 u2032 of the coated sheet article produced in the manner indicated above is uncoiled and fed to a cutting and stamping station 32 to produce individual separator plates 34 that can then be used in the manufacture of fuel cells as an alternative to this essentially continuous procedure the sheet article may be cut and shaped as separator plate blanks before the coating procedures and then the various coating steps may be applied to the individual cut blanks samples of aa5182 aluminum alloy were chemically cleaned and pre treated with a chromate conversion coating this was done to provide good adhesion for subsequent coatings the pre treated samples were then coated with a 6 micron thick epoxy based coating that was made electrically conductive by the addition of carbon black pigments coated specimens were immersed in 1 0 molar sulphuric acid solution at ambient temperature and at 80 u00b0 c for 14 days to simulate fuel cell exposure conditions at the end of the exposure period the specimens immersed under ambient temperature conditions were completely intact with no loss of coating adhesion and no blistering the samples immersed at 80 u00b0 c exhibited blistering on much of the sample surface but this may have been.