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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ย. 2024
- Thanks to PCBWay www.PCBWay.com... for the PCBs used in this video.
If you think PCBs are hard - check out these ones. We're doing a bit of a science experiment and attempting to Nickel plate our PCBS...
Varying degrees of success - but it was a fun experiment!
You can buy some nickel electrodes here (affiliate link): amzn.to/49A8Go3
Suitable vinegar (5%): amzn.to/3uBqT5E
The resistor box is this one: s.click.aliexp...
And the power supply (shop around for a cheap price!): s.click.aliexp...
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Little salt, little sugar... some pepper, garlic, olive oil...
7:47 you can test if the strip is made of steel or pure nickel using grinding wheel or dremel with cutoff wheel. Steel will throw yellow sparks, nickel won't
Nice - I'll give that a go.
Yup, this method works for me pretty well.
Wouldn't a good deep scratch on a piece, then throwing it in salt water overnight, not produce a rust line?
If you order boards with standard ENIG plating, it's really just nickle plating with a thin layer of gold that's only a few atoms thick. The gold is fairly easily disturbed mechanically, but it's just enough to passivate the nickle. The fun thing is that you can wire-bond right thru the gold because it's so thin.
i was told to use artificial sweeteners as a brightener, also wrap your electrodes in a coffee filters or buy filter bags (it stops the deteriorated metal contaminating the electrolyte). you could of saved some time by pen plating those tracks instead
Like the idea of coffee filters - clever. The whole brighteners thing feels like a massive rabbit hole :)
@@atomic14 ive seen brighteners work on copper plating and its a massive difference from the dull brown copper layer
It feels like electronics channel became baking channel 😅
A pinch of salt, a sprinkle of sugar... give it a bit of a stir, and bake with electricity :)
The salt sachet was excellent, when you used the irony nickel it reminded me of a proper chip shop experience. (I always joke that chip shop condiment (not actually vinegar...) is Brown Acid Water, as that's the three ingredients in order of concentration: Caramel Colour (Brown), Acetic Acid and Water!)
I wonder if the original failure and slightly patch appearance could be to do with surface preparation? Getting grease off effectively is very important for electroplating, and IPA does a reasonable job but not perfect. perhaps a light scrubbing with a soapy brillo pad would do better in that respect. That'll take off the oxide layer as well as the oils, some sort of abrasive polishing or active etch is a good idea before plating.
Surface preparation was definitely poor. I should have done a thorough clean before soldering my jumpers on. Once they were on I had to be really careful with the cleaning to avoid knocking them off.
Thats why you should insist on Sarsons Malt Vinegar.
You could try to recover the original PCB by reversing the polarity and doing the bath again, the nickel should go back to the electrodes
Not a bad idea. I might do a really upgraded version with bigger resistors so it can take more power.
To summarize: CLEAN your board carefully before any plating, starting with soap and water, finishing with a solvent like acetone. Don't touch it without gloves! Cleanliness is incredibly important.
Second, if you see bubbles, your current is too high, slower is better every time.
And finally, an abrasive cleaning pad will take off the burnt coating and corrosion. You don't need to remove it all, just enough so the surface is smooth and unbroken.
Finally, plating is as much an art as a science, at least at the hobbyist level. Be aware of how toxic your plating solution can be, and whatever you do, don't dump it down the drain!
You can also try "Hard gold" surface finish, its a gold alloy that is used for the little fingers in graphics cards for example
I had a look at that, but I think you are limited to only edge areas - though I'm not sure. It was also really expensive (relative to the $5!).
I think you need agitation for a uniform coverage.
I've seen aquarium pumps blow air into the liquid inside from the bottom of the vertical container, to agitate it.
There is also Electroless Tin Plating
- I prefer working with tin over nickel, due to allergy concerns
good point, I've read a few things about nickel platers becoming alergic.
My understanding has been that you need to maintain the voltage BELOW where the bubbles appear. The bubbles sort of poison the process and make the result plating porous. Then another thing - the best contacts would be when both parts (fixed and moving) are with metal that resists oxidation, such as gold or rhodium. However, you don’t put gold directly on copper. That means you put at first a diffusion block layer of nickel and then the gold. Besides other benefits, gold produces some lubrication. And what a flash of rhodium does, is not really clear to me, but I have seen that it turns the parts color (from gold) to sort of silvery. And then, my recollection about all the minor additives is that they should fight the bubble formation - smoothing the result. In the old days, they used some cyanide compounds. I once had a plating kit, “pens” of copper, nickel, gold and rhodium. The operating voltage varied by the metal, but was never higher than 8V. And never was there to appear any bubbles.
how about nickel plating a copper clad board, and only do etching thereafter? :)
I love me an experiment, especially when water and electricity are in the mix :) If you could jostle the bubbles away, might improve the texture greatly... maybe a periodic shout from one of your little vibration speaker things, attached to the container, would be sufficient? How did you go about replicating the pads? Eyeball, manual measurements or something else?
Also, in the final experiment, I think you wind up with a hard shell over a soft core because of the hasl--probably doesn't help, and might do even better straight on the copper... dunno but curious. ENIG would probably be best, and they're big boards to be paying for that finish markup.
I scanned the original board on a flat bed scanner and then loaded it into fusion 360 aligning it to a sketch I'd made by measuring the board. Then traced over the parts I wanted. Exported that as a DXF file and turned it into a KiCAD footprint. Final check was to print it out at 1 to 1 scale and hold it up to the light. Managed to get almost perfect alignment.
Pricing was very odd. Bare copper was more than HASL - I think anything outside of a normal production run switches to a different pricing model. ENIG was really expensive - relative to the $5 :)
Tin plating would be easier as it's a purely chemical process, and no requirement to bridge the tracks.
Interesting - I'll take a look.
5v should be sufficient. the amperage is another story. Guitar strings have pure nickel. And the connectors between 18650 battery's should be pure nickel.
There are a few reasons it didn't work well. 1) Current is based on cm2 of the plating area. Look online for a nickle electroplating calculator. Voltage for plating is not as important. 2) it was a large area, and you had it connected to a small wire. You should have used larger wires and connected both sides. 3) you need to agitate the solution, the bubbles sticking to the surface will cause issues. The black is normally what they call "burning " either caused by bubbles or, for some reason, current was high there.
The position really doesn't have an effect on plating as long as the electrodes are close to the surfaces. Having it vertical with horizontal electrodes would have turned out worse.
I wonder if “nickel coating” is a pcbway option.
Yeah, I wonder how ENIG or ENEPIG would fare... surely better than copper or lead.
salt not sugar, also .. yo unto patient enough you need concentrated solution a deep green color your one is pale. also put electrodes closer together also it help to do it in warm place where the solution starts at 30°C this will help to speed up the reaction, and you need more salt than a pinch . also the copper you need to polish to mirror finish and then clean any contamination, it is posible you contaminated the solution with lead and tin form those resistors as well. you should have concoated them or do this on bare board with no contaminates. also the solution needs to be stirred as forming bubbles will cause pit and groves to appear so you need the item to contently shake - to shake the bubbles off.
If someone's going to make a settable resistor box that takes up 10% of a person's desk, they could at least put some higher-power resistors in it!
salt water and electricity = Chlorine gas.
Not sure how much salt you need to make enough gas to burn your eyes etc.
i use potassium hydroxide in my water torch as it keeps the conductively of the water low without the risk of any nasty gas's just the oxygen and hydrogen.
I'm in a pretty well ventilated area - didn't notice any ill effects. But maybe I'll take a look at potassium hydroxide.
i don't expect the amount of salt you put in could release much in any case but you don't want to put to much in.@@atomic14
Nickle is for poor people like us.
Rich people use gold or silver.
Hey, can you show us how to build tflite micropyton firmware. Would be cool