Home zinc plating

[Jordan S.]

I just ordered the copy cad zinc plating system from Caswell. I've read the archives and see alot of you have had good results with this system.

I am curious about the recommended power supply. I intend initially on doing a few nuts and bolts but I know eventually I'll want to plate larger brackets, linkages, etc.

I'd like opinions on the power supply at the link below or any other power supply recommendations. I'd like to keep the expense down as this is purely for personal (ie. non-commercial) use as I restore my '70 vert.

http://www.buyreliant.com/psupplies/ps32lab.htm

Thanks for your advice.

[Stephen L.]

Re: Home zinc plating

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[Rob M.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Such a power supply is just fine. I've a 2A power supply but that is not needed at all. I still find it hard to get an even finish. Some people suggested to install a bubble device (used in aquariums) with a pump to ster a flow.

greetings,
Rob

[William G.]

Re: Home zinc plating

I am not familiar with the system you are discussing but you might consider what is the best solution temperature for the process. I am now retired but previously owned a gold jewelry manufacturing company and we did gold plating and stripping. For example, the stripping process needed to be about 85-90 degrees F to function. On a cold morning when the solution was at 55 degrees it would not strip at all. You might try adding some hot water, and if that works you could then use a fish tank heater. You might also consider using only distilled water which will not contain minerals. These are just basic suggestions. Usually these processes require very tight control.

[Donald T.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Jordan,

There are misconceptions about power supply. Plating requires pure DC power. Any power supply can convert AC to DC. However, they will produce ripple. Ripple is unconverted AC, and it is detrimental to your plating results. A plating rectifier like those supplied by Caswell is designed to filter out the ripple, and provide more pure DC. This is why plating rectifiers are more expensive than an off the shelf power supply. My advice is to invest in a rectifier that is designed specifically for plating.

Good luck with your plating!

[Don Y.]

Re: Home zinc plating

I bought a Caswell plating kit last year to refinish parts on my '57 project. Mine had the tank heaters and agitating pump included. I purchased a DC power supply off of eBay for cheap and my results have been very good. The manual that came with the kit and the Caswell user forums were very helpful in resolving any probelms I had. My results were spotty at first but as I used the process more and more they improved dramatically.

[Donald O.]

Re: Home zinc plating

While I am unfamiliar with the Caswell product, I have used the Eastwood product and for an electricla source, I used a pair of lantern batteries, I think they were 1.5 vdc each and were about the size of a motorcycle battery.

Don

[Greg L.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Jordan

I would go with the biggest power supply(within reason) that you can afford. I had lots of problems with my little 3A power supply in the begining and thought that it was bad so I borrowed one from work but got the same results.

My problem was that the plating was alway dull and needed lots of buffing with "large" parts like a vacuum advance actuator. Smaller items like a small bolt worked fine and I found that it would plate nicely within a few minutes and come out nice and bright with no buffing required. I figured that this PS just wouldn't cut it so I figured go hard or go home and bought a Mastech 30A one off of ebay!

Now some say that this is over kill but for me it works WAY better for MOST items than the little 3A one. I was still surprized though that I wouldn't plate some of my larger items because the surface area was well within Caswells recommendations. I asked about my problem on their forum and a guy by the name of SEANC sent me a PM becasue he didn't want them to see his reply.... Turns out the Caswell power requirements in their manual are WAY off in that you need far more power to do a good job than they say you need. Their new solution(which they have been selling for the past couple years) requires far more power than thier old solution! Remember the little battery powered PS that they used to include with their copy cad kits? Well they don't include them any more because they are too small to work now. Still he figured that my 30 A PS should have been able to plate my larger items as well so he was stumped a bit on that....but I think I may know why now...

Keep in mind that the solution is a resistance bath and your current draw will change with the size of part being plated, size of anode AND distance between the two. I would find that even with my 30A unit that the current draw would be enough to cause the overload protection to kick in if I had too much of a larger part in the tank. To plate my wiper door actuator for example I had to hold the part partialy in the solution and rotate it thus keeping the current in the proper range for a good plate and yet not causing the overload protection to kick in...trust me this was a pain in the butt! ...but it worked. The key to good plating is to have the part SLIGHTLY bubbling in the solution with the solution moving past it like from an agitator or by slowly swishing the part around in it. The idea is to keep the bubbles that form on the part from staying on the part.

Looking back on what I've done so far I think that I would have been better off getting a 3 gal or even a 5 gal kit rather than my 1.5 gal kit...but I'm cheap! I now think that if I had the larger kit that I would have been able to submerge the whole actuator AND keep it far enough away from the anode. This would have kept the current down, the overload protection at bay, and it probably would have plated the whole part at once but this is just my theory...

Oh and the reason that I bought a Mastech off of ebay instead of a Caswell sold PS was because when I went to order their 3A one they were all out and the Mastech one looks identical so I bought a 3A Mastech. Where did the 30A come from? Well I literally smoked the 3A one running it at full capacity for so long trying to plate such basic items. They replaced it under warranty and I upgraded to the 30A unit. Much later I read someplace that you shouldn't run ANY PS at over 85% of it's rated output for an extended period of time...opps!


Hope this helps.

[Jordan S.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Thank you for the very informative replys. I'll spring for a larger power supply.

[Gerard F.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Here's my setup for both copy cad and phosphate:



Here's my power supplies:



My first power supply was a Kikusui PAB 8-5 (0-8V, 0-5A) bought on ebay for my initial 3 gallon Caswell Copy Cad kit. Then I came across an identical unit, which has a master slave connection where I can connect the two together and double the amps or volts. I only use one at a time right now as I'm using the older Caswell zinc mix. I've heard that the newer Caswell zinc mix requires about 4 times the amps/sq" then the old.

Kikusui also has a 16-10 (0-16v, 0-10a) which might be the size to look for with a new 3 gallon Caswell Kit.

Here's my very first setup before I got a power supply:



I used a battery charger (not in picture) which was plugged into a light dimmer switch in series with a light bulb. I was somewhat able to control the volts/amps with the dimmer switch and size of light bulb. Pretty crude and cumbersome to use, but I did get some good results with it. Going to a power supply really makes it easy.

[Robert C.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Jerry, VERY IMPRESSIVE!!
I used a battery charger for my power suppy. 2/6 amp

[Jack H.]

Re: Home zinc plating

"Plating requires pure DC power. Any power supply can convert AC to DC. However, they will produce ripple. Ripple is unconverted AC, and it is detrimental to your plating results."

Hum, my EE professors would roll in their graves in response to this statement! In order to qualify for AC, the waveform has to totally reverse itself (ie, make a zero crossing).

Ripple on DC doesn't cross through the 0-volt threshold. Therefore, it's NOT 'unconverted AC', it's simply 'lumpy' DC meaning the DC voltage level fluxuates to some degree and isn't constant....

It's a piece of cake to smooth lumpy DC by installing a capacitor of appropriate size/rating across the power supply's anode and cathode lead wires. The size of the capacitor will depend on the frequency content of the ripple. But, you can easily get there via trial & error using an o-scope to view the waveform while you swap caps of various sizes....

The aspects of the power supply that you want for a plating task are:

(1) It's 'regulated' (that means it self-maintains a flat DC output).

(2) It has variable voltage output (0-6 VDC is about all that's needed for cad/zinc) and the more DC output is NOT better as final adjustment tends to get more 'touchy' with higher output variable power supplies.

(3) It has variable output current. Choosing here gets trickier because current output will depend on the chemistry of the plating system AND the physical size of the anode (donor metal) and the cathode (the part you're plating). But, for small part work, something in the range of 0-6A typically gets the job done...

[John L.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Gerald,
What an impressive set up! Say.............can you turn lead into gold with it?

[Gerard F.]

Re: Home zinc plating

Jack,

Not so sure that a little Ripple (not the vino) does help smooth out the zinc plating. Have heard of some commercial processes where they even use reversal of the current for short periods to smooth out and brighten the finish. I can see where a plate-deplate cycle could actually improve the finished process.

Take a look at this site:

http://www.pavco.com/display.cfm?p=59&pp=4

BTW, almost back in action after robotic pros surgery. Still hurting but have some time to do a little research.

Regards,

[Donald T.]

Re: Home zinc plating

"Plating requires pure DC power. Any power supply can convert AC to DC. However, they will produce ripple. Ripple is unconverted AC, and it is detrimental to your plating results."

Hum, my EE professors would roll in their graves in response to this statement! In order to qualify for AC, the waveform has to totally reverse itself (ie, make a zero crossing).

Ripple on DC doesn't cross through the 0-volt threshold. Therefore, it's NOT 'unconverted AC', it's simply 'lumpy' DC meaning the DC voltage level fluxuates to some degree and isn't constant....

Jack,

I'm not sure why it was necessary to demean me on the board by ridiculing my post. My comments were just based on what I have read and my own personal experience with home plating using various forms of power. Here's an excellent article (also referring to ripple as unconverted AC) that perhaps better articulates the point I was trying to make.

http://www.controlledpwr.com/whitepapers/ripple_formula.pdf