Electroplating

I have had a little free time this week so I had a go at setting up the plating kit.

I bought the Ultimate Zinc/Nickel Plating kit plus power supply from Gateros Plating.  The kit was £130 ish and has comprehensive instructions enclosed.  Here is what was supplied:

Firstly I needed to make some space for all the tanks.

Then I laid out the contents and confirmed I had everything I should have.

Everything as supplied

The Zinc and Nickel Anodes

Bubbler, Pump, Heater and Power Supply at the back.

 The Chemicals as supplied.  Some nasty stuff in there.

Very important PPE!

I had to make a 'Tank Bar' in order to hand everything from.  Most people use a copper bar with flattened ends.  I did not have any copper and I did not want to buy a large roll for only a short length.  I did however have some steel U shapped metal left over from some shelving.  I cut some slots in it and grinded off the powder coat.  I had decided to use an old paint container (cleaned) as my plating tank.  

My Tank Bar getting its trial fit.

I saw a post somewhere about plating multiple small parts at once.  I found these pea stem holder things at the local garden centre.  I figured I could modify them to hold multiple strands of parts at once.  Initially I thought about bolting them to the tank bar but later realised if I did this I would not be able to plate any more without removing the bar of making more whilst parts dried.  I may rethink this.

I mixed up the chemicals using warm water making sure to be wearing my PPE.

I started my by plating my tank bar.  As I had removed the powder coat I needed to protect it from corrosion anyway.  I started by popping it in a bath of Alkaline Cleaner for a few minutes followed by a tapwater rinse.  This was followed by a further short period in an acid bath again followed by a tapwater rinse.

In the plating tank.  It took me a wee while to get the right current.  Initially the plate was a dark grey suggesting too high a current.  I dropped this a bit and the plate went to a bright zinc.  I plated for about 25 minutes.

Plating results.  Clearly I could only fit half the bar in the tank.  This however gives a nice comparison.  Plating on the right obviously.  I followed this with a dip in the yellow passivate.

The resulting yellow passivate finish.  I did the other side immediately afterwards.

It turned out reasonably well.  There was an odd black stain where the water surface is.  Not sure what this is?

I thought I would give an actual car part a go.  I chose a bracket to start off with.  I had already cleaned this in my ultrasound bath so it was pretty clean.  Had a wee bit surface corrosion present.

Part pre cleaning.  Not you can make out a little of the original finish on the part still.

Back side.

 Acid dipping.

In the plating tank.  You could see the surface change after just a few minutes.

Post plating.  Really nice bright finish.

Back of the part.  Looks good.  Possibly a small bit of corrosion remaining that I missed pre plating.  We can see how this is after passivation.

Post yellow passivation.  Finish is good but a little uniform yellow.  As I understand the colours will bloom after it has dried for a bit.  I will leave until tomorrow and see what it looks like.

That's all for today.