I tried my kit on the weekend and got mixed results. I set up the power supply as per the manual that came with the kit. It worked really good with smaller items of a few square inches but at around 10 sq" it struggles. I set the power supply at 2-3 volts with the circuit open. With the current turned down I connect the leads and then slowly raise the current until the part starts to slightly bubble...not sure why but the voltage then drops to 1-1.5 volts. I lift the part out of the bath and the voltage goes back up to 2-3...lower it back in and it goes back down to 1-1.5. This set up works great on a few nuts and bolts but I can't get the same bubbling action on larger parts. The larger parts just take on a dull grey silt covered appearance. Also on larger parts of say 10-20 sq" the voltage drops even lower to about .5 or so volts! I would think that my 3 amp power supply is way to small but going by the calculation of 1 amp per 40 sq" it should be able to plate 120 sq"...correct?
This is how my set-up looked before I started. I set the voltage to 3.5 because 2 didn't seem to work...then again neither did 3.5. Bath temp was 112F.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010065.jpg
This is it in the tank. Note the amps set at 3A and hardly any bubbles at all.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010063.jpg
After one hour this is what it looked like. The black inside is electrical tape to try and reduce the surface area to reduce resistance and increase the voltage.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010064.jpg
Then I rinsed it off and wire brushed it and tried to polish it with white scotch brite but the results were quite poor. I should have taken a pic of it then but I wasn't really in a good mood at the time . Then I decided to try and "roll" it in the bath with it just contacting the bath just enough to bring the voltage up. I screwed a piece of copper wire to one of the screw holes in the housing and bent it so that it came straight out the middle so that I could turn it with my fingers. The lead was connected to the end of this wire and just spun on it as I turned the housing. This is what that all looked like. Note the higher voltage, a lot more bubbles and a much brighter housing!!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010068.jpg
As you can see, I did manage to get it plated but I don't think that this is how it's supposed to work.
This next one was how I think it should work. Voltage was set to 2V and the bath was still at 112F. Note that the amperage is still quite high for a few washers and screws but it isn't maxed out on my 3A power supply and that there is slight bubbling. I actualy had to turn it down!
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010071.jpg
This was how they looked when I took them out after about 10-15 minutes.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010072.jpg
This was how they looked after I rinsed them...I would say that they turned out they way they should.
http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/P1010074.jpg
So now I don't know what to think. It would seem to me that you need obvious bubbles to get a good plating job. All of the smaller items I have done that require me to turn down the power supply turned out really nice and did not require any buffing...just rinse and dry and that was it. Not quite sure what to think at this point...
One interesting thing happened though as I was TRYING to plate one of the expansion tank straps. The strap was in the tank turning all dull gray when all of a sudden it started to bubble and fizz. I looked at the power supply and it had some pretty high numbers...don't remember what they were because it was kind of a blur as I went for the current knob to turn it down. These few second of fizzing actually blew away some of the dull grey and you could actually see some nice bright zinc on the strap. But when I went to turn the current back up nothing happened. I played with it for a bit and then realized something was wrong. I am getting NO current at all now and my 0-18 volt power supply now goes from about 6-21 volts! So I guess I need another power supply. It was an ebay one from a place in San Jose and came with a one year warrany so I'll see how good thier warranty is north of the border.
Despite not being able to plate any of the larger items it still is lots of fun trying to do this myself...just a little frustrating when it doesn't work the way the book says it should.
So from what I have shown you all here, am I doing it right or not. I was using the bubbling action as a guide because that was when it produced the best results. If that is correct then something is wrong with the 1 amp/40 sq in formula because the tank strap is about 20-25 sq in and there is no way in he^l that my 3 amp power supply would come close to doing it. Any opinions, thoughts and suggestions are appreciated in my plating quest.
Since I initialy wrote this post I have tried another 0-30v/3a power supply and got the same poor results. I also used 10 ga wire to help reduce any resistance but that didn't help either. It just seem like 3 amps is way to little to plate anything larger than 5-10 sq". Is the fact that my voltage is dropping so much when the part is in the bath a clue or is that normal
??
Any help here would really be appreciated.