Copper plating question

[KCV6]

Carts, what is the PH of the tank?

Ok a small cheats way to subdue the ASI beast (I'm sure many will disagree but it works for me).

1. Get a piece of copper pipe of known surface area inside and out, or even better a flat sheet of copper, reasonable size simular to what you would typically plate.

2. Set up your tank to the correct plating temp ready to plate, check PH and use an eyedropper with pool acid to balance if it is too high.

3. Set the ASI correctly by the book for the size of test piece you have. Plate and verify a nice shiny finish. If it is still dull, add small amounts of brightner. Re-check PH and balance with acid again (having a high PH is no guarantee there is enough brightner, it merely means the tank is not acidic enough).

4. Once the test piece is plating well, note the VOLTAGE. As a guide you can run your tank at this voltage for all items that are roughly around the same size as the test piece. The current will sort itself out based on ohms law. To vary the resistance and therefore screw up the dreaded current densities requires a major change in temperature, size of items in tank (load) or a different voltage applied.

Always, always, always, always do a test piece and write down all its details, area in square inches, temp of bath, duration of plate, PH, ASI and VOLTAGE. Always position the items centrally in the tank. Keep a notebook handy and list down this info for different plating runs. A few minutes of notes kept = less pain later as you now have know working referance data for your setup. Every setup is different. The Caswell manual is spot on as a starting point for a perfectly new batch of chemicals. You have trial plated at all sorts of current densities and the tank is now unknown but still good. You need to find the "sweet spot settings" for your tank. All plating chemicals contain impurities, these will plate out within the first few plating runs. Plating tanks improve with age.

I have great success with just setting the voltage these days as I know for an average load in my tank at the correct PH and temp what my voltage should be. this goes for flash copper, copy chrome and zinc.

If I need to do a particularly large part, then yes I try to work out the surface area, same goes for a 1 off very small piece.

I state with no doubt in my mind at all that 99.9% of the problems people have with dull finish on nickel/ copy chrome tanks is all down to insufficient brightner, which leads to doubts about ASI and doubts about temperature. The eventual frustration leads to everything being set incorrectly. I have been there.

Hope this helps

Cheers Mark

[KCV6]

Forgot to mention before the dreaded 60 minute timeout on post edits. All the Items shown plated in my gallery pics were done setting Voltage. I did not calculate surface area for any of them. I did however ensure there was sufficient brightner. My tanks are now well seasoned and always work well.

Cheers Mark

[KCV6]

Flash copper and what it should look like.

Ok just for you folks I stripped the zinc and crud off of a mini crank pulley and lightly bead blasted it and threw it straight in the Flash copper. See my galery pics. Had I polished the part it would have come out nice and shiny.

Once again, no surface area calcs, the power supply was simply set to 1.5Vdc and the item left for 30 mins.

Another thing that may be screwing some people up is the quality oif their power supply. Some do not regulate as well as others. In the early days I had all sorts of flaking issues with my Copy Chrome but no problems with flash copper or Chloride Zinc. Turns out my supply was tripping out every few minutes for less than a second. This was enough to screw up the Copy Chrome.

Cheers

Mark