my nickel-plating solution works ^_^

[solarbird]

My first nickel-plating! Of a piece of test wire but that's not important what's important is it works!


I did it with the solution I made myself, keeping DC below 3 amps. That meant a higher voltage than often recommended, but I had very good control over the amount of power going through the system and it was pretty even!

After a few minutes I found I'd added about 0.05mm to the wire, is around a quarter additional thickness - the bare strands are, my calipers tell me, are 0.20 to 0.22mm.

I don't know if that's a lot? But it was still going so I could've added more.

Mostly I just wanted to see if it would work and if the nickel would just fall off but it doesn't seem to, not even when I'm abusing it for the calipers. So I think that's a good sign. The wire was, importantly, factory clean in that I'd just stripped the insulation off.

Here's a close-up of the donor bar/anode, which I think is pretty. You can really see where the atoms came from! I bet I could do this a lot more evenly, if I wanted.


Anyway, VICTORY FOR TAK!

Comments

[vatine]

Yeah, I have vague memories of seeing plating tanks with multiple donor sources and the object-to-be-plated in the middle.

But, I am very VERY far from having any plating experience and amuse myself by trying to derive thinks from first principles. We did a little bit of, um, I think zinc-plating, of copper in chemistry in the gymnasium, but that's as far as I have played around.

[solarbird]

Yeah! Zinc is basically the same process. I just went with nickel because it's nicer looking and if I want to use it on a tool, I'd want to use nickel.