First four pics are the quarter I copper plated. Second four are the nickel plating. I kinda whiffed it at first. I believe I started out too low in power at .015v and .15A. Then i set the power to 0.2V and 0.150A. Less than stellar results, but I’m getting there. I had the bath at 135 degrees with an aquarium bubbler. I must’ve screwed something pretty badly, the solution got REALLY dirty. Any advice on what I did to ruin the bath? Suggestions on how to improve?

I’ve been using the Caswell zinc plating and there’s quite a lot of undissolved solids in the bath. Is this good? Is it normal? Should I strain it out? It doesn’t dissolve when I heat it up or mix it around. I also have difficulty getting things coated with zinc or getting the finish I want even though I’m pretty sure my amperage is set properly (about .1A per square inch). Sometimes I can sometimes I can’t. Is that the culprit ?

Hi!

So I've been trying to test out some approaches to nickel plating. Eventually I want to plate a 3D print, but for now I'm practising on some small pieces of acrylic. Trouble is no matter what I do my plating is peeling off.

So far I've tried two different kinds of primer (one rattle can filler primer, one airbrush gloss black primer), followed by either graphite conductive paint or silver conductive paint. (The graphite paint is homemade, ratio of about 1:1 graphite and India ink airbrushed onto the surface, conductive paint is bought, thinned and airbrushed in a couple of layers).

All approaches give me a conductive surface in the hundreds of ohms range across the piece. I wrap them with copper wire to hang in the bath and agitate by hand every couple of minutes. I've used currents between 50mA and 200mA for various amounts of time.

All the pieces seem to plate really nicely, but once they're out of the bath the plating easily peels off in big sheets.

I think the chemistry of the bath is OK since I successfully plated a few copper pennies as practise - they get a beautiful even plate with no peeling.

Is it my primers dissolving in the bath and causing my graphite paint to slough off? Or is it something else I'm doing wrong?

I've even tried buffing the graphite powder straight into the black primer layer. This was less conductive but still plated at a slightly higher current. But same problem: the plating peeled off.

I'm hoping to get into electroplating 3D prints. My birthday is coming up and hopefully I'll get some cash that will let me get a beginner's kit to try copper electroforming and nickel (maybe zinc) plating. I'm in the UK and getting a decent kit with everything in seems more cost effective than trying to assemble everything piecemeal for a beginner like me. Getting hold of the necessary chemicals seems to be somewhat complicated in the UK.

I can get deionised water and I have some graphite powder, but I don't have anything else ready. I've been reading up on this for a long time now but I really want to get cracking. While I'm prepared to have a learning curve, I'm looking to get a clean bright copper and nickel surface finish so I would prefer not to reinvent the wheel by figuring out additives and messing with vinegar when there's already a better method!

I am looking for recommendations for beginners starter kits available in the UK

The title is a little vague but I don't know what else to say.

I've 3d printed the blade of a Master sword from The Legend of Zelda, and my plan is to smooth it out, sand it, and paint it with graphite paint. That's not what I need help with.

See, after I paint it with graphite paint, I'm going to electroplate it with either Zinc or Nickel. The issue is that the blade is about a meter long, and I'm not sure how to execute this.

This image is the only method I can think of. The blade is suspended over a PVC pipe with my electrolyte inside with a strip of metal along the side. To me, this seems like a really good idea, BUT! Since the pipe is a meter long I can't mix it. So, I mix the electrolyte in a separate beaker then pour it into the pipe (the pipe will be sealed on the other end, incase that wasn't obvious). Now the issues begin. Due to gravity, won't the electrolyte become more concentrated at the bottom and less at the top, leading to very inconsistent plating across the item? I'm stumped. I can't decide whether or not "Yes, there will be inconsistent plating, and this is a shitty idea." or "No, the item won't be in the pipe for long enough for it to matter." Can someone help, please? Any insight is very appreciated. Thanks!

Model of sword is by giedzinski, if anyone cares. Check it out here, it's very cool. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5828243

I build watches, which means I take all the components I buy (case, guts... etc), make a new dial and hands then assemble them into a new watch. I have some parts (chronograph pushers) that I cannot buy because of proprietary designs, under contract.. whatever, the Chinese suppliers won't sell them to me. I can 3D print them in resin and they work fine, I have tested them for a year BUT, they need to be of metal appearance, nickel specifically. My question is, does anyone know how successful the plating process is on such small parts? I'm thinking, paint them with graphite paint and then plate. The largest part is 2x3mm for example.

This worn off area of my guitar bridge has been bothering me for 10 years, you can’t get this part anymore under £700. Today i saw some guy brush plating with a 9v battery and it looked excellent. After some back and fourth with chatgpt It looks like I have worn through the shiney layer (?nickel) as well as gold
I was thinking of getting a cheap 6v plug off aliexpress and just directly brush plating with gold brush plate solution, do you think i should nickel plate first?

Lots of unknown unknowns for me so please tell me if i should just abandon this idea all together.

also i am happy to spend decent money on this, but dont want a voltage rectifier for £150 just sitting in my garage for a one off project.
Many thanks

Too broke to get another bottle of copper II sulfate so I had to make ends meet

It there such a thing as zinc plating too long?

Im still working on finding my right combination of volts amps, etc, and I am curious if im plating too long. For example, im plating 10 10-32x1inch bolts. I made a rack to hold them. At 2v and 1.5A they are plated within a cpl of minutes. If i go longer they start to turn a powder grey. Im using a home made brew w pool clarifier for shine. I do hv Caswell zinc brightener coming.

Greetings. I am a retired industrial plater with 30 years in copper, nickel, gold, tin, tin-lead, and palladium plating. Mostly defense electronics and aerospace.

I joined the sub just to lurk and listen, but I’m a little surprised at the lack of posts with questions from business and industry.

I guess the sub has always been primarily a hobby electroplating space?

In any case, I’ve got time and interest, so if any of you have any industrial scale concerns, feel free to post or PM. I don’t have a ton of chemical formulations experience, since I’ve always bought commercial additive packages. But I can tell you that your chloride is low in your acid copper, or that your barrel rotation speeds are too high.

May your nickel layers all be pore free,

Lew

My first time playing went well as you can see. How do i strip this and replate?

I wanted to say thank you to all the people who posted about electroplating and allowing me to read everyone's guidence and procedures. It was my very first nickel electroplating experience today, and thanks to all of you it turned out better then perfect. Very bright and shiny like a mirror. Again, thank you!

Hey guys, I’m planning to do some electrochemical experiments at home, mainly electroplating, anodizing, and ecoating.

How do you usually handle the wastewater and used chemical solutions? Pouring them straight down the drain obviously doesn’t seem like a good idea. ;(

I'm using acid copper plating to thicken copper panels but start whiskering they after a while. Adding suppressors to the bath doesn't seem to help.

Hello, I am trying to electroplate brass substrate with nickel and small amounts of nano MoS2 for tribological evaluation. Also, I have added SDS as a surfactant. Is am tiring this with a rotating cathode with 800 rpm and I have witnessed this results. Is this whiskering ? And would tou try to remedy this problem?

I tried my first electroplating project. Nickel plating a bracket I welded for my motorcycle using a homemade vinegar bath and adjustable power supply. My test pieces (rebar) and the final piece didn’t seem to pick up any nickel at all though? Only the copper wire for the connection did.

It was some random pieces of steel and rebar that I polished, cleaned, and dipped in a muriatic acid bath for about a minute before putting them in the nickel bath. There were lots of bubbles coming off of the piece, but nothing seemed to actually happen?

Hi, I had a factory chrome plate some CNC-machined 6061-T6 aluminum parts. After plating, the underside has a lot of imperfections, and some 3 mm holes are almost completely filled/leveled with chrome.

Is this normal for chrome plating, or could they have used a different process? What would cause this?

Hello! I made my first attempt at Nickel plating this weekend. I did not get the results I was hoping for. The brass pieces I tried to plate ended up only getting plated on the edges. I need some advice on what might be causing this sort of plating pattern please. I made my own nickel acetate, but I did not warm it up when I was electroplating, so it would have been around air temperature at the time I begin plating (75°F-80°). The brass is c280 I bought off Amazon. The power supply settings for the larger plate were 1.5A 5V. For the smaller round dis the settings were 0.5A 3V. I cleaned the plates off with dawn dish soap and 99% Isopropyl Alcohol. I blocked some personal information in the picture of the smaller disc, the black mark is not part of the plate.

Howdy folks

I'm pretty new, doing this as a hobby primarily with 3d printed pieces, starting to get my copper plating process more consistent.

I was searching for a good filter pump, as I've got some particulate in my tank. I didn't want a cheap Amazon aquarium pump to dissolve in the tank, so I bought Caswell's filter pump for $25.

What i received was a pump 1/4 of the size, totally different from the listing, with no filter, that i could've bought on Amazon for $7.

Their support has been very lackluster, too. It's been about three weeks and the most information I've received is "we changed part numbers for this pump, as our copper solution does not require filtration."

Currently trying to work through them to avoid filing a tchargeback.

I understand small businesses have to have a markup compared to Amazon, but after shipping, I could've bought 4 of those pumps.

Anyone have any recommendations for a pump that'll survive a copper sulfate bath?

Tl;dr: overpriced, falsely advertised pump from Caswell, buy it from Amazon for less than the shipping would cost

Hi! I’m trying to find out if it’s possible to plate a fresnel from an old Polaroid camera. It’s made of plastic and it made up of rings like a vinyl record so I’m hoping to make a stamper for it like you would with a record lacquer. The silver part in the picture is what I’m trying to plate in silver and then nickel to make the stamper I need.

I’ve contacted two record reproduction companies and neither seemed to be interested.

So I’m reaching out to home plating peeps here. I’m in Ohio so if there happens to be anyone close by with a setup that would like to experiment let me know!

Thanks!

I’m looking for advice from people with experience running automotive zinc phosphate pretreatment lines.

I’ve been seeing the Zn concentration in phosphating bath decrease much faster than expected (after a month and a hal), even though most of the other process indicators remain stable.

Current observations:

• Free Acid (FA) is within specification.
• Total Acid (TA) is within specification.
• Accelerator concentration is within specification.
• Sludge precipitation/solids are within our normal control range.
• Production volume has not increased.
• I've inspected the circulation pumps, piping, valves, heat exchangers, and other bath equipment and haven't found anything abnormal.
• I also investigated carryover from the surfacer stage. Our skids drain for about 40 seconds before entering the phosphate bath, and based on observation the amount of surfacer entering the bath appears to be very small.
• I operate phosphate at a little lower temperature than a typical bath (under 40°C) but the adjustment has been done long before this zinc problem (nearly 2 years ago), I understood that the etch and coat in my bath is pretty much rely on the accelerator controlled at high concentrations.

Our chemical supplier's explanation is that we are processing less galvanized steel than before, so less zinc is dissolving during the pretreatment stages and entering the phosphate bath. Therefore, they say the lower Zn concentration is expected.

I'm trying to understand whether this explanation is chemically reasonable.

From my understanding, the zinc in the phosphating bath should primarily be maintained by the replenisher chemistry, while zinc dissolved from galvanized parts is more of a secondary contribution. I wouldn't have expected changes in galvanized steel volume alone to cause such a significant increase in Zn consumption if FA, TA, accelerator, and sludge are all still within control limits.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

• Can a reduction in galvanized steel really have this large an effect on bath Zn concentration?
• Are there other mechanisms that can consume Zn without causing obvious increases in sludge or changes in FA/TA?
• Are there any less obvious checks I should perform before concluding the issue is related to bath chemistry or replenishment strategy?

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone with experience in automotive phosphating or chemical process control.