Do it yourself plating

[purplepickup]

I had to make a special sized seat post for a bicycle and it has to slide inside the frame tube.  It slides real nice right now but it's bare metal.  If I paint it the paint will probably screw up the fit and I'm sure the paint will just scrape off when I slide it into the tube.  I'm thinking that plating it might work best to protect it from rusting in the Bonneville salt.  I think zinc should work good.

I've looked a little online for info but it seems like there are different ways of doing it.  Recommendations for electrolyte vary and I'm not sure about how much amperage to use.  I'd prefer to use household stuff if I can instead of buying a commercial plating kit.

I plan to sort thru the info but I wondered if anyone has done any plating at home that came out good?  Any tips?  The part is polished right now and I'd like the plating to be nice and smooth too.

[GPster]

Make it from stainless steel. GPster

[Charlie Chops 1940]

I don't have a clue how to do plating, but I have this mental picture of george in his laboratory with a bunch of steaming beakers and bubbling test tubes whille he laughs maniacally....

[Bob K]

I don't have a clue how to do plating, but I have this mental picture of george in his laboratory with a bunch of steaming beakers and bubbling test tubes whille he laughs maniacally....

Yep I agree, especially the maniacally part.

B ~:) B

[Ohio Blue Tip]

I knew there was a mad scientist in Michigan.  

[purplepickup]

LOL   I just came in from the shop and saw what you guys wrote.  You don't know how right you are!  I'm not sure if it's zinc plate I got but I got something on my first beaker (yogurt cup) test.  (Insert evil mad scientist laugh here)  I must return to the shop and my anodes and cathodes.....more mad laughter.......  

[Sean]

I think Gpster has the right idea. Sounds like you are just looking for an excuse to play with chemicals...

[purplepickup]

GPster and Sean I agree, stainless would have been great but I had to do some welding on it and I'm not set up to weld stainless.  Plus I had steel and didn't have any stainless in the sizes I needed.  Besides I've been curious about plating at home anyway.

A huge thunderstorm came thru while I was out in the shop.  The perfect setting for Dr Frankenstein type experiments

Here's a few pics of my experiment.

For electrolyte I used a mixture of ammonium chloride and zinc chloride which coincidently is what soldering flux is made from.  I used a 9V battery at first.


It only took about 15 seconds to start bubbling.


The steel didn't seem to be getting plated so I changed over to a 6V/4amp battery charger.  At least the solution bubbled more.


This picture is out of focus but you can see that something happened to the steel.  It had juice running thru it for about 5 minutes.


I cleaned it up real good and rubbed it with some Wenol to see if it would polish.  It didn't.  In fact I'm not sure there's any zinc on it either.  I can see a little difference where it was in the electrolyte but not much.


Right now it's got a big goober of Bonneville salt on it to see if it rusts any less where the plating should have been.   I'll probably have to let it set a while.  I think I'll set it out in the woodshed for a few days.  The anode in this picture is a piece of zinc sacrificial anode that I had.  It looks like it sacrificed a little.

[Pep]

I haven't done it before....but am going to try fairly soon. Here is a link to an Aussie site that sells kits. He also tells of the ingediants. Its a good start. Make sure you read the "Articles"section. very informative.

http://www.eplate.com.au/

[purplepickup]

Make sure you read the "Articles"section. very informative.

Thanks Pep.  I can see I did some things really wrong...like too much voltage among other things.  If I was planning to plate a lot of parts, it might pay to get a kit but just for this one part I can remake the part with stainless for a lot less...or just turn a few thousands more off, paint it and forget about it.  At least I had an interesting evening and I did learn something.  I'll probably mess with it a little more.

So far, the salt has rusted the piece of steel except where it was supposedly plated so something must have got on it.

[EMSjunkie]

Dude, you been standin' waaaaayyyy too close to them fumes.  


good luck, let us know how it turns out


Vance

[35WINDOW]

You might try this site if you haven't already-they sell plating kits-

wwwcaswellplating.com