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Originally Posted by PeterMorley
I've just bought a copy cad setup from Caswell Europe and I'm struggling.
Got everything set up, tried plating something (a forged steering arm which I bead blasted first and cleaned in warm SD416) and it just doesn't seem to take the plate.
A fine grey foam grows around the piece and the wire it is hanging from, but after 20 minutes or so when I rinse it off there is no sign of any plating on the surface of the object.
There are now some pieces of this foam (looks like miniature lava) floating in the tank.
I'm sure I've done something wrong but can't work out what it is!
I adjusted the voltage to around 1.5 volts which meant a current around 0.5 amps, also tried higher & lower and got similar results.
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Peter;
I'm in The Colonies, so I don't know what the "SD416" cleaner is.. Suffice it to say, that you need to use a strong degreaser on the metal, followed by a media blasting (I prefer using sand, folks over here get their panties in a wad over Silicosis.. they assume everyone is an idiot, one does need to take precautions) followed by another thorough degreasing then a cleaning to remove the degreaser (are you seeing a pattern here?? The part needs to be all but sterile)..
Let me sort of "shift gears" here, for a moment.. You said you blasted the part then degreased it.. If you didn't Degrease the part BEFORE you blasted it, the air pressure just drove the dire and grease deeper into the pores of the part.. you noted the part is a "Forged Steering Arm".. and "forged" means a casting which are full of holes, cracks, fissures, etc. You are almost going to have to boil that part in lye to get it clean enough to attempt to plate again..
Okay, back to what I was originally talking about.. once you think you have the part clean enough, perform a "Water Break Test".. you want the water to "sheet" over the cleaned part, NOT bead up.. "beads = grease/dirt, sheet = clean" (I trust you are wearing doctors gloves, your greasy fingers will screw-up a clean part!!).. Now, you are still not ready to begin plating.. you should have done your math homework back in high school and learned how to calculate the surface area of all sorts of geometric shapes.. remember, you said "I'll never use this after I'm out of school".. Guess what?? You were wrong!! (we all were!!) Once you know the surface area in Square Inches (hey, that's what we use over here) you can now set your Plating Power Supply to about 98Milliamps Per Square Inch.. i.e. 10 Square Inches of Surface Area equals 980 Milliamps (or .98 amps) of power.. Don't worry about "volts" the Power Supply will figure out what it needs to "push" the amps and supply that amount.. This is assuming your Power Supply has infinitely adjustable Amps/Milliamps.. If your amps are "fixed" and your "Volts" are adjustable, you are screwed and will need to purchase a proper Plating Power Supply.. the minimum size I feel you need is a 12volt25amp unit, this will handle a lot of small parts.. if you are planning on doing larger parts, figure the Surface Area (all six sides) of the largest part you think you will ever do then buy a proper Plating Power Supply to handle that part and you should be set..
Now, to your current problem (no pun intended).. you didn't say what type of Power Supply you are using, but you did make a comment about "adjusting the voltage".. as previously noted, that is bassackwards. You didn't mention the Surface Area of the part, so we don't know if half an amp is too much or not enough current to plate the CopyCad/Zinc properly. You said you've "got everything set-up", but said nothing about what that "set-up" is (how big are your plating tanks, do you have two anode plates hanging 180 degrees apart from each other, what are the sizes of the anode plates (each), is the "Anode/Cathode (part)" ratio about 1.5:1 or better? If not, this could make for some other problems later.. What temp was your plating bath (in Fahrenheit, we have a helluva time converting to Celsius over here).. Are you running "agitation"? Is it creating a "head" on your tank or barely moving the Plating Solution?? Is your "agitation" a water pump or an air bubbler??
In short, every little detail, no matter how small, is important enough to affect or afflict your plating outcome..
Hope this helps.
Charles