Electroplating for Amateurs
eBook - ePub

Electroplating for Amateurs

Classic Reference for Small Workshops

J. Poyner

Share book
  1. 250 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Electroplating for Amateurs

Classic Reference for Small Workshops

J. Poyner

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Electroplating for Amateurs an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Electroplating for Amateurs by J. Poyner in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Tecnologia e ingegneria & Commercio tecnico e manifatturiero. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Principles of Electroplating

Present day electroplating has become a well-established branch of metal finishing. Electroplating is a multidiscipline of engineering, mechanical and electrical, in co-ordination with applied chemistry.
In the early days of electroplating the industry started with wooden vats, D.C. generators, experience and ‘rule of thumb’ methods of process control. Over the years new metal finishes have been introduced. Automatic plant has been developed to cope with the increased volume of parts to be finished and to control the process, ensuring a constant quality of finish. Increased uses of metal (steel, stainless steel) and various plastics have been seen in the making of equipment for the finishing shop.
Present day finishing shops offer a wide and varied range of finishing processes: ion and gas plating, high speed selective plating, anodizing and electroplating on aluminum. Various electroless finishes cover a wide range of engineering requirements. Various alloy platings are carried out, such as gold cobalt, which gives a hard thickness of gold. There is also brass plating for electroplating safety pins, and components which have various rubbers bonded to them.
Over the last fifteen years development has been carried out on the plating of plastics. The technology of printed boards in the electronics industry has added impetus to the development and many plastics can be successfully electroplated. With the various processes involved in electroplating and current requirements of health and safety, appropriate precautions must be undertaken to avoid accidents and reduce pollution of the environment. These are dealt with in one of the following chapters.
With most of the processes used in model engineering there is ready-made equipment sold on the market, obvious examples being lathes, milling and drilling machines, along with the materials, metals and plastics. In comparison, with the electroplating process there is very little choice available on the market, apart from kits for electroplating. This is due to their limited use as compared to the machining and fabricating operations in model engineering and in small workshops generally.
The other main reason, however, is the degree of availability of the chemicals. Certain chemicals are restricted, and restrictions are placed on them in transit. The electrical equipment needed can be adapted from other sources – electrical test equipment, Avometers, or battery chargers or large capacity electrical cells. If desired a permanent rig can be made. This is useful for a continuous volume of components that have to be finished. A wiring diagram is included in the chapter on the supply of current.
With regard to the tanks required, this is dependent on the size of the component to be electroplated. A useful size is the 5 liter plastic ice cream container. These are useful for most pre-treatment and electroplating solutions. For warm or hot solutions, ways and means of heating the solution may be considered, such as fish tank heaters, or, if using a stainless steel or mild steel tank, a gas ring or electric hot plate may be used.
Chemical glass beakers made of heat-resisting glass may be used and can be heated on an electric hot plate or over a Bunsen burner with a suitable stand and gauze. This equipment can be purchased at most laboratory equipment suppliers.
The model engineer must decide on what size and volume of components he wants to electroplate, and what finishes he wants to use. These points will have to be considered, whether he wants a rudimentary or a more substantial electroplating facility. The other relevant factors are the space available, cost, and the convenience of using the equipment. For example, considering one finish for similar size components and a steady volume, it would suffice to have a simple facility of an alkali cleaner, a pickle made of diluted acid, with a rinse tank containing cold water or preferably running water. It could be made even simpler for certain components by giving them a scour with abrasive powder, then rinsing in cold water.
After these pretreatments, the components are electroplated in whatever electrolyte is chosen.
For an electrical supply a 12 volt battery, or a battery charger of 12 volts or 6 volts, may be used.
At the other extreme, for varied components and large volume, one could use an elaborate line of pretreatment and rinse tanks, with a line of electroplating tanks all combined with the custom-built rectifiers, heaters and agitation. The cost of this would be considerable, and there would be the problem of disposing of effluent and spent chemicals.

PRINCIPLES OF ELECTROPLATING

The fundamental laws of electroplating are based on Faraday’s two laws. These state:-
(1) The weight of metal deposited is proportional to the quantity of electricity passed.
(b) For the same quantity of electricity, the weight of metal deposited is proportional to its electro-chemical equivalent.
These two laws need a little explanation to understand their implications. This is best provided by defining the units. In law 1, the weight (w) is in grams or ounces and the quantity of electricity is in coulombs, which is amps (a) x time (seconds) (t).
Therefore w is proportional to a x t.
In law 2, the electro-chemical equivalent is defined as the weight an element will replace or combine with eight parts by weight of oxygen in a reaction.
The valency is defined as the number of atoms of hydrogen which will combine or replace one atom of an element, in this case a metal.
The relationship between atomic weight and electro-chemical equivalent is: atomic weight = electro-chemical equivalent x valency. An example is nickel, atomic weight = 58.71, valency 2. Therefore electro-chemical equivalent
Illustration
The Faraday as a unit is defined as a quantity of electricity which is (amps x time), which will deposit 1 gram equivalent of the metal.
The figure for 1 Faraday is 96,500 (amps x time) or coulombs. Now 1 ampere hour is 1 amp x 3600 seconds, or 3600 coulombs. So in 1 ampere hour the weight of a metal deposited will be:
Illustration
In the p...

Table of contents