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You will find numerous videos on YouTube and you will hear lots of different views on how to best do it. I don?t suggest that my way is best by any means, I am certainly not a professional plating specialist, nor am I always successful. But people seem to be interested...
First off - its fun....
There are loads of variables to consider and much waiting to see what happens.
What I was really after is a satin sheen and not the brightness of modern day bolts (which are actually zinc plated because it is cheaper.
The picture above shows you the kit as delivered. There are several suppliers and I tried the kit from Gateros, Caswell is another well known supplier. The Gateros kit is smaller but cheaper.
The instructions are pretty simple to follow in order to produce the tub of Electrolyte. It should be remembered that you ARE playing with acid, it wont melt the skin off you but its better to be safe than sorry so I wear eye protectors, thick rubber gloves, clothing that is not my Sunday best and work in a ventilated area.
Apart from the basic kit, you really need a couple of other items. Firstly a small heater as the electrolyte must be heated between 20-50 degrees. I discovered after much reading that 32 degrees is pretty common so I simply used an aquarium heater and it has worked a treat.
Next the plating finish is smoother if the electrolyte is constantly moving. I can advise that it is a bit boring, stirring with a spoon for up to an hour. So.... I use an aquarium pump and a long air stone. The bubbles don't stick to the metal and spoil the finish and it keeps the fluid moving nicely. Very easy. Very cheap.
Initially I tried a 12 volt battery charger to provide the power but after a few weeks of plating I upgraded to a proper voltage regulator. You do need a level of adjustment because there is a power formula to plating.... in simple terms for each 1 square inch of metal to be plated you need 150ma. So round figures, 6 square inches of plating needs about 1Amp.
With the kit you receive a seriously basic voltage regulator (essentially a loosely wound coil of resistance wire strung between two bolts). To work out how much power you need, you add up all the surface inches to be plated (remembering that all items have edges and a reverse side!) Add up the milliamps then....... guess where that amount of power would be produced on the resitance wire and attach the crocodile clip. It works but its total guesswork. Yes you could put an Ammeter in series with the circuit but I didn't have one.
The theory continues that you plate the metal for 30 - 60 mins but you cant (shouldn?t) take the metal out of the electrolyte until its finished. This means that its a little bit like guessing when a cake is done without opening the oven door - i.e. it is a game of experience... or you can take my advise and leave the components int he tank for an hour.
Enough of the theory, lets get on with it.
Good plating just like painting is all down to the preparation. Cleanliness is everything. After cleanliness comes the finish - matt / satin / shiny
1.Shot blasting the item before plating gets it clean and smooth and produce a nice matt finish
2.Following on from the shot blasting with a piece of wire wool gives you a satin finish
3.Completing the job with a rotary wire wheel in a drill starts to bring a shine to the bare metal.
The more shiny the bare metal - the more shiny the finish is.
In case you wondered... chrome plating is a three layer process. Nickel plating is done first first, then the item it is plated with copper which is then polished to a very high level, and finally its into the chrome plating tank. Its the polished copper that gives chrome its highly polished look. You can of course do chrome palting yourself as well - you just need the three different plating kits.
Personally i use a home shot blaster to clean (previously degreased) pieces. There is a wide range of blast media - I originally used aluminium oxide, but it produces a lot of dust so its quite hard to see what you are blasting. Now I use Garnett, a low dust, low cost media. I tried B&Q kiln dried sand for paving stones but it was absolutely hopeless - it just bounced off the metal.
Air pressure I set to 150psi. Professional blasters use a LOT more pressure than this but to be honest I don't blast anything over about 6? in size as the professionals are pretty cheap so I let them do it. Really I just plate brackets, bolts, linkages, washers etc oh and anything that I cant afford for the blaster or the plate company to lose!
There is a light inside the blasting unit - but a 250watt halogen lamp adds substantially more light and does not produce much heat.
In the picture below are the items that i will be plating. Apologies for the rubbish photo, I didn't realise it was out of focus until after the event. These are part of the front shock-absorber installation. Its the sleeve that sits on the bolt that the shock-absorber slides onto. I notice that one of the washers has a very large hole compared to the other one. I will need to replace that.
Out of the blast cabinet gives you this finish:
I thought I would do the shock-absorber top bolts at the same time so these were blasted too.
Next we come to the light polishing stage of the drill with a wire wheel attachment:
I run the drill at about half speed which is not painful when your fingers touch the whirling wires... I tried wearing gloves but a lot of the items I plate are quite small and fiddly.
After a quick clean with the wire wheel the components look like this
This took no more than two minutes an item.
Now the alchemy.....
Plating works by one piece of metal sacrificing its self when a current is passed through it. So you need pieces of nickel suspended into the electrolyte to be the sacrifice. Mounting them is simply achieved by drilling the nickel and passing some copper wire through it then placing the nickel block into the electrolyte but NOT the wire that it is attached to!
So you now connect the positive part of the circuit to these blocks of nickel. If you connect all the nickel blocks together on a loop of wire this connection is very easy. You must now suspend the items you want to plate into the electrolyte using copper wire 'hooks' and hang them from a piece of copper tube (see photo). The negative connection goes onto this copper tube.
So the current flows from the nickel blocks through the electrolyte to the components and back to the power supply. The current carries the nickel onto the component. Simple.
All that is left is the power... Egor..... throw the switch...
Although this picture is also blurred (sorry), you will see that about 1.75 amps is flowing.
Simplistically, the amount of time the item is in the tank for, will dictate how thick the plating is. Personally I leave them for an hour.
All that is left now is to rinse them off in plain water, dry very thoroughly and there you have the finished items. I usually wipe a coat of ordinary wax over them apparently it helps seal the plating:
