r/electroplating

I’ve been reading up on electroplating jewelry and watches and figure I’m ready to experiment.

I have built a few Seiko mods and I think I’m going to try and plate one rose gold.

One question I ask of you all - with a stainless steel watch, my process would be = Ultrasonic clean>Rinse>ElectroClean>Rinse>Nickel Strike>Rinse>18/24k Gold>Rinse>ElectroClean

thanks everyone, I have pre made solutions and I intend to use the prescribed voltage and temperatures.

Cheers

First four pics are the quarter I copper plated. Second four are the nickel plating. I kinda whiffed it at first. I believe I started out too low in power at .015v and .15A. Then i set the power to 0.2V and 0.150A. Less than stellar results, but I’m getting there. I had the bath at 135 degrees with an aquarium bubbler. I must’ve screwed something pretty badly, the solution got REALLY dirty. Any advice on what I did to ruin the bath? Suggestions on how to improve?

Started about 4 hours ago, I'm sure there will be others like me just interested in general and wanting to see immediate results without spending any money at all. (Or before they spend money)

Tools I used:

-6 AA batteries

-Mini glass dish

-Masking tape

-Copper wire out of old cable

-Malt vinegar

-Table salt

Best (poor mans) method I have found:

Strap 5 batteries together with masking tape and copper wire. The negative will bubble and turn very dark. Stir it about every now and again and wipe the residue off both negative and positive.

Wait for the liquid to turn into gatorade.

Swap to 1 battery setup. Take item you want to plate and attach to negative side. Stir it the entire time or it'll just wipe off.

Turn a 10p coin copper (mostly) i only left it in for about 2 minutes because I kept knocking my setup by stirring too aggressively.

I am sure there are many more effective ways to do this and I would be super keen on learning them, tutorials I found online have at least a few purchases required.

Next goal is to scale everything up and use conductive spraypaint to turn a plastic prop helmet into copper

Edit: did the 10p for another 10 minutes and by golly this bad boy is truly plated now

Hi!

So I've been trying to test out some approaches to nickel plating. Eventually I want to plate a 3D print, but for now I'm practising on some small pieces of acrylic. Trouble is no matter what I do my plating is peeling off.

So far I've tried two different kinds of primer (one rattle can filler primer, one airbrush gloss black primer), followed by either graphite conductive paint or silver conductive paint. (The graphite paint is homemade, ratio of about 1:1 graphite and India ink airbrushed onto the surface, conductive paint is bought, thinned and airbrushed in a couple of layers).

All approaches give me a conductive surface in the hundreds of ohms range across the piece. I wrap them with copper wire to hang in the bath and agitate by hand every couple of minutes. I've used currents between 50mA and 200mA for various amounts of time.

All the pieces seem to plate really nicely, but once they're out of the bath the plating easily peels off in big sheets.

I think the chemistry of the bath is OK since I successfully plated a few copper pennies as practise - they get a beautiful even plate with no peeling.

Is it my primers dissolving in the bath and causing my graphite paint to slough off? Or is it something else I'm doing wrong?

I've even tried buffing the graphite powder straight into the black primer layer. This was less conductive but still plated at a slightly higher current. But same problem: the plating peeled off.

This worn off area of my guitar bridge has been bothering me for 10 years, you can’t get this part anymore under £700. Today i saw some guy brush plating with a 9v battery and it looked excellent. After some back and fourth with chatgpt It looks like I have worn through the shiney layer (?nickel) as well as gold
I was thinking of getting a cheap 6v plug off aliexpress and just directly brush plating with gold brush plate solution, do you think i should nickel plate first?

Lots of unknown unknowns for me so please tell me if i should just abandon this idea all together.

also i am happy to spend decent money on this, but dont want a voltage rectifier for £150 just sitting in my garage for a one off project.
Many thanks

Too broke to get another bottle of copper II sulfate so I had to make ends meet