Having problems, pics inside

[Brintiff]

Now I'm getting discouraged. I polished a piece of 4" copper, used the same preps as I described above except I scrubbed the piece in the degreaser and pickle number 4. I set my PS to constant voltage and set the voltage to 3 volts, the amperage was 3 amps in the beginning then dropped to 2.7 amps for the rest of the plating cycle. I left the part in for 1.5 hours.

I have a very brittle flat gray plating on the copper, as you can see in the pics it peels right off. When I peel some off the area that was touching the copper looks like chrome, it looks nice. The bath temperature was 82 degrees.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0776.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0777.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0778.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0779.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0780.jpg

[woodjames]

WHOA!!! Didn't realize things where getting soo bad. It looks like you are burning the -Heck- out of it, for lack of a better word that the forum accepts. Measure the thickness of the peel-offs they should be at around .0015 at optimum plate current.I've done it before with flash copper, but mainly in HCD areas. Weird though that the PS is reading 3 volts, you should be right on. Have you checked the calibration of that? Cut down your practice cycles to 10 minutes. What kind of PS do you have Just S+G's run the same thing, for 10 minutes at 1.5 volts, post results. Be sure you are going in live. Where are you located?

-Jimmy

Originally Posted by Brintiff

Now I'm getting discouraged. I polished a piece of 4" copper, used the same preps as I described above except I scrubbed the piece in the degreaser and pickle number 4. I set my PS to constant voltage and set the voltage to 3 volts, the amperage was 3 amps in the beginning then dropped to 2.7 amps for the rest of the plating cycle. I left the part in for 1.5 hours.

I have a very brittle flat gray plating on the copper, as you can see in the pics it peels right off. When I peel some off the area that was touching the copper looks like chrome, it looks nice. The bath temperature was 82 degrees.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0776.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0777.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0778.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0779.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y14...f/IMG_0780.jpg

[Brintiff]

I checked the amperage before, not on this run though. I checked with two different clamp on meters, all three were within .25 of an amp of each other.

I did not and have not been going in live, I'll change that on the next test and like you suggested I'll just go 10 minutes. After 10 minutes the part will look the same as a full plating run but just thicker?

My part was 4" piece of 3/8" copper, using the calculator I come up with only needing .77 of an amp.

I live in SE Florida

[woodjames]

You'll find that going in live, to any solution is an absolute necessity. It'll cause adhesion problems if you don't.
10 minutes will be long enough to see what's going on, and it'll have the same appearance as long times. Longer time will let the brighteners do their job, but for what you're testing for - 10 minutes is plenty.
Keep a chart for voltages set at various steps. You want the best plate you can get with the highest voltage - sort of like ''efficiency''.

Keep posting results!!! You'll get through this.

Originally Posted by Brintiff

I checked the amperage before, not on this run though. I checked with two different clamp on meters, all three were within .25 of an amp of each other.

I did not and have not been going in live, I'll change that on the next test and like you suggested I'll just go 10 minutes. After 10 minutes the part will look the same as a full plating run but just thicker?

My part was 4" piece of 3/8" copper, using the calculator I come up with only needing .77 of an amp.

I live in SE Florida

[Brintiff]

Okay I have a stupid question. How can I go in live? The piece Im doing calls for .7 amp, I can't set my amperage unless the part is already in the bath, outside the bath there is nothing that is drawing current so there is no way to set it.

[Brintiff]

Okay, this piece was done for 10 minutes at .8 amps and 1.9v , The first pic shows the bad area, it's plated but it is a smoke gray , the second pic shows an area that looks a little better, at least there is some shine to it. I tried polishing by hand with a little Blue Magic, the part that had some shine to it came out okay I guess, nothing to brag about. The gray area showed no improvement.

[woodjames]

I always just have my voltage set, you should be able to get a reading there at all times, and then submerge the part, all powered up. That looks much much better! This may be the point where continuing things will bring up the brightness. I think you are much closer at that voltage, you may want to run it for a half hour. Try sandblasting down to the copper, how is the adhesion?

Originally Posted by Brintiff

Okay I have a stupid question. How can I go in live? The piece Im doing calls for .7 amp, I can't set my amperage unless the part is already in the bath, outside the bath there is nothing that is drawing current so there is no way to set it.

[Brintiff]

Well I tried two more samples tonight. The first three pics were done at a constant voltage of 2v with an amperage of 1.6 for one hour. I don't have any idea what happened but as you can see from the pics it aint pretty. The third pic is after I wiped the loose pieces of plating off, the first two is exactly how it came out of the bath.

The next three pics is of my second attempt, I went back to using constant current at the amperage suggested by the program. I came up with 12.56 square inches which gives me .879 of an amp. I ran .9 of an amp for 30 minutes, had a voltage of 1.7 volts. As you can see in the pic it came out grey with very small amount of somewhat reflective areas. The last pic is after hand polishing with Blue magic, it's better but still not even close to being acceptable.

At this point I have no idea what to try. I'm going to fill out another tech support ticket and link to this thread. I'm thinking maybe I should just strain the bath, filter it with carbon and add more brighteners and start over.

I cannot find anything that says how much brightener to add or when, can too much brightener be added.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated , I can't believe I'm having this much trouble, I guess I got spoiled by the ease of the electroless nickel and anodizing, I got those two processes right off the bat.

[Brintiff]

[Brintiff]