Easiest Nickel Electroplating Guide for Bright Nickel Coatings
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ค. 2024
- This is the easiest set of instruction I think that exist to get bright nickel plating without paying through the nose for expensive plating baths. The ingredients are relatively cheap and the results are amazing!!! Let me know what you think of this guide in the comments
Recipe:
Nickel Sulphate 8 grams/oz
video tutorial: • How to Make Nickel Sul...
get from amazon: amzn.to/2sC5WYn
Nickel Chloride 1.7 grams/oz
get from amazon: amzn.to/39wj2Ha
Boric Acid 1.1 grams/oz
get from amazon: amzn.to/2MOk6N4
Nickel Metal
get from amazon: amzn.to/36eQL6b
I tried to make these instructions easy to follow and simple, in my experience I've only had limited success with nickel plating up till now but with this recipe I've gotten really good results. This recipe is called a Watt's Plating Bath and is based on the guidance provided in the nickel plating handbook which can be viewed here: www.nickelinstitute.org/media...
Nickel plating is useful for creating decorative coatings of bright silvery metal that's corrosion resistant or for precoating other materials in preparation for copper plating such as when copper plating steel. Too see more about this reaction you can watch my other video on the topic: • Why You Can't Copper P...
Electroplating is different from electroless plating in that a power source is used to induce the chemical reaction and there are two electrodes used in electroplating. This nickel plating bath is fast and only requires about 1 minute to get a complete coating of nickel on a part. You can easily provide the required voltage from 2 or 3 AAs or a cell phone charger.
Let me know what you think of this guide in the comments below and follow me on FB and Instagram.
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Just started my venture into plating. Came across your video for research before I plate my first projects. Great info, clear and concise. Thanks!
Thanks for getting back to me on the degreasing , it’s a very good comprehensive and easy to follow video .
Thanks.this is the best guide on youtube.i can't wait to test it out
Absolutely amazing video, thanks!
Excellent instruction. Thanks
You really did an excellent job, every bit as bright and evenly plated as anything I've gotten using ready made plating solution from Rio Grande or anywhere else. Thanks!
Cool! Thanks for the great recipe. I had problems with an air bubbler in my electroless copper plating bath too. I suspect the oxygen level in the bath will affect the oxidation state of the ions in solution. The commercial plating shops have huge hundred gallon tanks, so the overall volume to bubbler ratio is much larger than in a beaker, and the wisdom to use a bubbler becomes widespread. At least, this is my theory. We should test by using an argon bubbler.
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to try that. Also, I've been a long time subscriber and viewer of your channel and it's an honor to have you watch my content!!! Happy New Year!
Hey applied science!
@@GarageScience Hi there, Excellent and practical video! In keeping with Ben's comment, you could quickly determine what was going on with respect to potential oxidation by using nitrogen gas.
Thank you!
nice nickel plating
Nice ❤
Garage Science.
I was getting burnt spots too just not as black. I looked into it more after watching this video and found some very good information. I'm sure you can make more sense of it than I can as I just started plating like a week ago.
I'll leave a Link to the source below.
When metal is electrodeposited onto a cathode, the pH in the immediate vicinity of the cathode increases to very high levels. It can reach up to pH 11 or 12 very near to the surface of the electrode. The higher the cathodic current density, the higher the pH will rise. However, at pHs above about 6, nickel is precipitated as nickel hydroxide and if this happens at the cathode surface, the deposit will look very dark and is known as "burnt". To overcome this, boric acid is added to the bath as this controls and reduces the changes in pH, thus preventing the precipitation of hydroxides. However, boric acid is only useful at pHs above about 4, so where it is of little use in very acidic solutions such as acid copper. You can, in theory, run a nickel bath at very low pH's, but at these low pH's the efficiency will fall off dramatically as you will co-deposit hydrogen;! this will also lead to hydrogen entrapment and subsequent embrittlement of the deposit. In many applications, such as aerospace, this would be a total no-no.
Most nickel baths use between 30 and 40 g/l of boric acid; personally I like to run at levels closer to 40 than 30 as I have found it keeps the bath in better control. As a side issue, I have come across one well known company who operates a nickel electroforming bath at 120g/l boric acid, but they operated a sulphamate nickel bath at 90C. What I did find surprising about their bath was it didn't suffer from any stress or apparent breakdown of sulphamate to ammonia and sulphate. Their "trick" was to regularly replace some of the electrolyte and always keep it hot - if they didn't, the pipes got clogged with boric acid crystals and once this happens it is a real pig trying to redissolve it!
www.finishing.com/102/10.shtml
What are ubtrying to explain is chemical plating not electroplating
Hi from Chile,
Excellent video!!! Question: for copper playing on stainless steel, would not be better using Wood’s Nickel Stricke? Thanks for your help
Great video :) question about the coins you nickel plated..... Are the magnetic after electroplated with nickel?
Very useful vid.! It's nice to see someone using a "real", professional plating bath instead of nickel acetate (from vinegar).
Have you tried any brighteners?
Anybody that's wondering, nickel chloride is exceedingly easy to make. Hydrochloric acid and two nickel electrodes, and run some current through it. The chlorine will react with the positive electrode, creating nickel chloride, and the hydrogen will form on the negative electrode and bubble off. You'll want to cover the container, because hydrochloric acid is nasty stuff, but poke a pinhole in the cover to let out the hydrogen gas. This will take a while though
Also, for a Watts bath, you want to use 15 - 40 mA/cm^2, too much will cause burning and stressed deposits, too little and your nickel plating will be really inefficient.
I will be using a power supply to provide 3-5 volts. How many amps?
Question have you used pet to help brighten the plating in your solution?
Does the boric acid act as a brightened like PEG
I've got postal scales coming out of my ears but I'll be damned if I can get any nickel chloride. Thanks for the video :)
Nice video. Can you explain the function of the boric acid?.
You need the solution to be slightly acidic and the weak acid nature of boric acid it also functions to provide a pH buffer to keep the solution acidic for longer since electroplating isn't 100% efficient and solutions tend to become less acidic as they are used.
My first attempt I got a complete coating but it’s grey and not shiny at all, I ran it at 5 amp would you know what I did wrong?
What would Zinc look like on there?
Is this a concentrate or ready to use? Seems expensive if it's not a concentrate. Dilute, if not, with distilled water?
I would like to comment here that you can use the lost art of Contact Plating(electroplating without applied electricity but with natural electricity) to coat copper coins with that nickel plating bath, all you need is a aluminum pan a heating source, once the solution is close to the boiling point(don't let it boil) you can drop clean pennies and move them around and they will be coated with Nickel, I have a video on doing that on my channel.
E X C E L L E N T ! ! !
Try using a stirrer introducing oxygen and all the other gases in the atmosphere may be reacting to the nickel solutions.
First of thanks for your super useful work, really mean it!
Sorry to mind you, I did reserch however I could not come with proper answer.
I bought 96 % nickel battery strips as the one that you use in your videos. To check the nickel purity I let one nickel strip piece in water and salt for 24 hours. After that time my nickel turns yellow were I cut the strip, the strip, sold as 96% pure, to me looks like coated. I bought several nickel strips from 3 different shops, all sold as 96% pure, all 3 turned yellow.
In your experience can I use it anyway?
Thanks again for your help
buy nickel anode not nickel strips
I watched your other video on making NiSO4. Rather than making crystals and then redissolving them for nickel plating, can I use the solution from the other video as it is or do I need to modify it in any way before I add boric acid and NiCl2?
So thing is that it's a little difficult to know what the concentration is when you dissolve the nickel initially. Additionally, there will almost certainly be excess sulfuric acid left over in the solution. By precipitating out the NiSO4 you can (mostly) eliminate potential contaminates like that. You may be able to, but I haven't tried it for those reasons.
Isn't it necessary to add some type of nickel "brightener" to make the nickel plating finish shinny and bright?
hey i figured id put this here since its your most recent vid even though my question is about copper. I tried electroplating a walnut and within a couple minutes a very large amount of loose copper gathered on the wire I used. Do you have any idea what could have caused this and how i could avoid it? The room was about 65 and i was running .2 amp
What plating solution are you using? I've made a video on two different copper plating recipes. This problem could be caused by excessive plating voltage. What is the voltage you are using? When trying to copper plate things with conductive paint it takes extra time for the initial layer of copper to form. Sounds like the majority of the 0.2 Amps you're plating with is going to the wire you're using to hang the part in the bath. This is normal since conductive paint still has more resistance than bare copper wire. Try leaving most of the insulation on the wire to prevent this from happening. Only leaving enough wire exposed to make contact with the part will help the plating current you measure be more representative of what's getting electroplated to your part.
Apologize if i missed discussing it. How are disposing your contaminated baths? Ive been tinkering and the contaminated baths slow me down.
For the copper plating baths you can dilute and dispose on a patch of ground you dont mind killing the grass in. For nickel solutions I've evaporated the water until I have solids to dispose of. There are probably chemicals you can get to precipitate the nickel out with.
The black stuff is other metal than nickel touching the nickel solution. Best result for nickel plating is using nickel clips to avoid contamination of the solution by other metal elements during electrolysis process.
I haven't tried air to agitate the plating bath. I have a small magnetic stirrer - works great and fairly inexpensive.
I made a stirrer which works well. I've been trying to keep my costs down. On the topic of cost and simplicity I've seen videos of people using vinegar as the electrolyte and just letting it deposit nickel in the solution over time. Have you tried this method?
@@LEO-xo9cz Hi - that would be like immersion plating. I use immersion nickle plating of non-conductive surfaces coated with conductive paint (ink). This lets me get into areas that are otherwise difficult to plate.
@@edspencer5122 Interesting. I'm looking into electro forming as well. What is the difference?
@@LEO-xo9cz It's easier to give you and example of electroforming. If you had a dried leaf and coated it with a sealer like varnish, then put a coat of conductive paint, such as powdered carbon, over the varnished surface. The leaf could be electroplated in, say copper. The copper solution if it had a brightener would be a shiny surface. That is electroforming, plating over something that was non- conductive.
@@edspencer5122 Thanks Ed. I'm familiar with electro forming. I've been researching it for a while now. I'm also looking at Zinc Plating my copper Plating. My question is Electrolytes. Watts Plating bath sounds like the professional method but I've seen many people use vinegar or citric acid and copper anode and cathode and just letting it run.
You think that is better for forming?
On the point of conductive paint I've seen people make paint by crushing the carbon from batteries. How does that compare to graphite?
Can this be done on zinc plated screws or stripped steel screws?
It should work on that.
Hi, is sulfuric acid required to lower the pH of the bath?
No, I have another video where I show how to use citric acid instead.
Before nickel plating do I clean the substrate metal with anything?
A degreaser such as dish soap is fine, maybe a light abrasive such as bar top cleaner. Some papers suggest dipping in HCl to "active" the surface, just be careful because HCl can be dangerous in high concentrations. Also rinse really well with water so there is no carry over of HCl into the electroplating solution.
@@GarageScience thank you sir !
So a watts solution then .. helps to heat the solution while plating between 40-60 C
how temperature helps?
i don't know where to get nickel chloride in my country. can i plate without it?
You can always make Nickel Chloride with Nickel Sulfate, just add sodium hydroxide to concentrated Nickel Sulfate to make Nickel Hydroxide then use hydrochloric acid to make Nickel Chloride
U can do this much more simply by just making nickel acetate solution. Use vinegar with a dash of salt as base liquid, place anode and cathode, both with nickel object and let it cook in the solution for a few hours....then connect cathode to object you want to plate..voila
I have 6V battery charger and always get dark results, I wonder if it is because of air?
Possibly if you are using an air sparge like I was initially. Also you could try putting a few diodes in line with the power supply. Most diodes have a standard 0.7V voltage drop across itself when it's conducting. Putting 3 in series would get you approximately a 2.1V voltage drop.
At 4:18 you say don't use to much nickel because you don't want to much nickel in your bath if so why use nickel chloride?
In aluminium Anodising it's more about amps, do amps play a role here too? Is Nickel Acetate effective?
I had the same question. It seems that the nickel chloride raises the conductivity of the nickel sulfate solution. Sodium chloride (salt) should do the same thing.
NaCl will do the same thing, however Na is a contaminate metal and can cause the nickel deposits to be brittle or flaky. You also don't want a ton of nickel in the solution either as that can cause rapid deposits that are black and sludgey. You're right that it's more about amps. I speak in reference to voltage because that's what most people are familiar with and most DC power supplies function as voltage sources and not current sources. You can actually calculate the number of atoms deposited (to some degree of accuracy) based off the current and time spent plating.
I have a brass zippo but when I decided to use my lighter, my zippo changed brass to black. I wanna nickel plating my zippo. I hope I can success that. But ı don't trust myself about it :(
Do you use any type of Chemical cleaners or Surface activators (aka: Pickling bath)
I read a DIY company who sells DIY kits for home & hobby use advocating them.
What they call the “Surface Activator “ is a [Sulphuric acid] solution. And the cleaner Solution used before the Sulphuric acid is weak HCI Solution.
📍I’ve only seen the online DIY folks using a HCI solution before they do the Nickel Plating process.
📍Any suggestions with either of these ? Or maybe something else you prefer?
Thanks for your content!!
Lee
I have used a cleaning solutions. And I do it 3 stages. Clean thoughly before hand. Dip for about 10 seconds in HCl, about 10-30 seconds in H2SO4 and rinse in clean water before and after each.
@@GarageScience
Ok so pretty much the same 3 steps that this company suggests & BTW {sells the Battery Acid for $40 a quart.}
Along with an HCI Cleaner called (ElectroClean)for about the same cost.
❗️They also use a Stainless steel Anode & run a Low ⚡️thru the solutions of each of those 2 steps before getting the Nickel.
📍I machine many of my parts in Aluminum & like to Anodize & color with dye if need be. In my Anodizing steps there is a
⚗️2-3 minute soak in a 20% “SODIUM HYDROXIDE Solution”
❓What are your thoughts of using (A NaOH) 20% Solution in place of the HCI Bath for Cleaning Brass prior to the H2504❓
BTW: I REALLY APPRECIATE your quick response to my questions on your TH-cam video. As well as your Killer Content💯
🙏Thanks🙏
☯️Lee
NaOH is basic versus the HCl which is very acidic. The acid helps cut any grease or oil that's present. Whereas NaOH leaves a soapy residue. The NaOH could get used in the initially cleaning but I'd still finish with the H2SO4 and HCl. Using the SS electrodes helps accomplish electrocleaning which is good for removing a microscopic top layer of metal. At a certain point it's probably overkill because the plating will have deficiencies in the deposit due to bath purity levels and more cleaning won't prevent that. And most DIY plating baths aren't totally pure either.
@@GarageScience Excellent- Exactly the information I was looking for! I really appreciate you taking the time to give me a Quality answer to my question💯 👏👏👏
Respectfully,
Lee aka: ☯️ZenModeling
yeah, this is soooooo much easier than vinegar, salt, an old nickel and a battery.
Por. Que no los traducen en español
I suspect that your aquarium pump is pumping too much air through your solution, and the result is "burning" of your deposit. If you can bleed off some of the air and/or increase the bath temperature, you should see improved results.
How do you degrease your parts to be nickel plated .
Dish and an abrasive and isopropyl alcohol.
Thank you for this video! I've been disappointed with my attempts at nickel plating so far and I realize it's because of the electrolyte solution I'm using. Not enough chemicals in my solution. I'm going to try this and report back. Also, check out this link on nickel plating, it's pretty damn exhaustive. www.nickelinstitute.org/media/2323/nph_141015.pdf
Here are my thoughts after plating a bunch of bolts from my car using a semi-bright Watts plating bath. It's worth it to get an variable power supply. The ability to control voltages/current becomes important when the part size changes because a constant power output might work well on one piece, but won't for another. The nickel anodes shown in the video are good if you're doing small pieces very infrequently. In my experience, they are too thin to last for any substantial amount of time and you end up wasting time setting up more anodes. Buy the thicker stuff if you have to plate more items. I dipped my parts in a solution of distilled water and muriatic acid prior to plating. I can't comment on results without the acid bath, but it makes the surface that much more clean. The prep is the most important part of getting a good results. Really hot water and some degreaser works well. I'm very satisfied with the results. The coating is super hard and durable and can be polished to even look like chrome.
most nickel plating solutions claim to have an extra ingredient for a brightener....does your solution have this?..thanks in advance
I didn't use an ingredient specifically meant to act a brightener. I was fairly impressed with the brightness of the coatings I got without using a brightening agent.
@@GarageScience thanks for the reply
Are you sure you produced 300 grams of NiSO4 and not 30 grams?
Please ignore. Sorry.
Great video, but I need to make a few comments. Air agitation is a very poor way to agitate a bath. It's often used in shops because it's simple, that's it. Hidden costs include power for the blower/compressor, heat loss from the bath, and the build up of impurities (O2/CO2 from the air and minerals when tap water is used for make up). An eductor with pump and solids filter gives much better results in a large bath. For working in a beaker, a heated magnetic stirrer would be best. The copper pennies you use are copper cladded zinc. An exposed edge or deep scratch into the zinc could affect plating quality. And please wear nitrile gloves. Some people are allergic to nickle and will develop nickle itch. Really bad exposure can lead to skin ulcers and sores. The risk may be low, but why take the chance?
the black thing is carbon. the rest of chemical reaction, acid is braking out for oxygen, carbon and metal from your solution. I was cleaning part few times from that black carbon.
to get rid of bubbles of air on part, good choice is put high voltage, like 12 to 24 v, this way the small micro bubbles will very fast going out.
Wow, you have Nickel Sulphate, Nickel Chloride and Boric Acid in your garage 😕
It gets worse if you mix imperial and metric units. But nothing a calculator can't fix. 😂
Was trying to make it simple for anyone that didn't have a full chemistry lab at home 😉
Seems overly complicated. Also as an alternative to a bubbler (which always seemed like a bad idea), maybe just a pager motor vibrator will agitate things enough.
Boric acid, Nickel chloride... yeah, that's very "basic" stuff
Yea actually it is ,😂
@@jacobkudrowich in us maybe
lost me at "Grams per Ounce" C'mon man, stick to metric if you want to be taken seriously. OR at least stick to one unit system.