Caswell Plating

[grannyknot]

Charles, you have done it, you found the right combination, the finish is perfect.

Would you mind doing a synopsis on this latest run? I know it all changes when someone else tries the same procedure but it will get me in the ball park and I'm sure will produce better results than I had last time I plated.

[Namerow]

Can I send you my parts?

[Captain Obvious]

Yeah, really! Those things look great! Can I send you my parts too?!!

If I brought a box to Zcon, would you have enough time to turn them around for me before I left?  

[Patcon]

Uhhhhhh, no and no... I wish I was at the point that I consistently got these results and I may be getting real close to there. I plated most of today too on some of Cody's parts and had pretty good success...

[Captain Obvious]

Haha!! Oh well. Can't blame me for trying!! 

I'm glad you're getting such good results. Hope it continues!

[Patcon]

14 hours ago, grannyknot said:

Charles, you have done it, you found the right combination, the finish is perfect.

Would you mind doing a synopsis on this latest run? I know it all changes when someone else tries the same procedure but it will get me in the ball park and I'm sure will produce better results than I had last time I plated.

I will give this a shot:

I start with the parts, if they are oily or nasty I wash them, you can use purple power, carb cleaner or sometimes I use my parts washer. Get them clean...

If I am worried about residue I might wash them with soapy water or use carb or brake cleaner...

Then I bead blast them in here...until I get clean metal. Bolt threads can be a problem

and I am currently using these beads

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00867RC50/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

                Extra Fine glass beads

                Price For: Each Standards: OSHA Size: 53 lb. Item: Blast Media Media Type: Glass Beads Size: 53 lb. US Sieve: 170-325 Nominal Dia. Micron Range: 45 to 90 Nominal

                Dia. Range: 0.0017" to 0.0035" Grit: Extra Fine Country of Origin (subject to change): United States

Then your part will look about like this

Then you need to string everything up. I just started using some finer copper wire yesterday and I found it much easier to work with and gives less shadowing on the parts. I stripped some multi-stranded copper wire and I use a few strands or even one sometimes for really small parts and string them up on there. I use heavier wire for larger parts and for making hooks to hang parts. I have 2 strands in my hand...

Then I head to the plating bench

During this time I have been warming up the bench. Cut the crock pot on low if it's warm out. High if it's cold out...

The crock pot is the first step. Running hot SP Degreaser from Caswell. I leave the parts in here on strings until I am ready for them. They can sit in there for a long time. I have even left them for days and they don't rust. If you leave them in water or exposed to the air you can get flash rusting. After this point parts only get handled with gloves until they are dry...

Next over is the power supply. I am running a power supply I bought off Amazon I believe

It's 10 amp so that would give me about 83 inches or so at .12 amps/squ in

The pickle tank sits between the power supply and the plating tank. It is muriatic acid and I have stopped using it for now. If you have parts that have some rust that you really can't get clean then the pickle tank might be necessary but for now I am skipping it and seem to be getting good results. I had concerns the acid was etching the parts and making the parts rough, and sometimes it discolored the parts which effected the final color.

Plating tank is running with a submersible aquarium pump HFreight (be sure when done plating to rinse this pump and blow dry or it will corrode and not run the next time) circulating fluid. 2 Anodes one on either side of the tank. 2 heaters running off a thermostat that keep the tank about 110d F. I am using Caswell plating solution and their Zinc brightener additive

So parts come out strung and go into hot SP degeaser. They wait there until the plating tank is available. I dip them in a rinse bucket, then I hang them on a copper tube I have suspended across the plating tank (this bar has corroded alot during this effort and made connections a problem so I plated it tonight to mitigate that)

I am running parts based on the square inches of surface area. If it's a washer you count both sides. I made an excel spread sheet with some formulas that work a little better than the caswell formulas. It does washers for instance based on id, od and thickness instead of having to calculate the area of a cylinder and subtract the area of a cylinder. I may try to attach it later...

I calculate my amperage at .12 amps per square inch. I was at .14 but I have found a little lower seems to work a little better and the plating times aren't too bad.

When I first put parts into the tank. I will check them within just a few minutes. If the plating is dark. Sort of primer gray then you need brightener. I have found if in doubt, add a little bit. Parts should come out light gray with really light highlight areas. I have even had some parts come out that almost look like they've been chromed...

Also if I am getting some blackish areas your current is too high. I have found though sometimes parts will develope some black on them, almost looks like soot. Looks bad but when they go in the first chromate tank it is gone almost instantly.

I have also found on my last few batches that the correct amperage gives me a voltage of about 0.3V. We will see if that holds true now that the hanging bar has been plated...

Today I ran the current up until it read 0.4V then backed it off a little until a little bit inside the 0.3v range to get good plate. The higher you run your current for a certain size part the higher the voltage will be (that's "Sparky" talk ). I have also found when plating concave parts, sometimes the interior area doesn't want to plate due to the magnetic lines of current. So to get around this I plate at my normal current for a while, maybe 75% of the run time. Then I turn the current down, sometimes to even half of the previous amperage. This seems to help the interior areas plate by reducing the magnetic fields . I normally plate for 20 -30 minutes depending on how big the parts are and how the coverage is coming. The more complex the shape, the more you have to turn it and rehang it or rotate. Plating works by line of sight. So the hanger wires can cause shadowing, other parts can cause it or even hanging in the tank can cause it. So I check parts about every 10 minutes or so to make sure every thing gets covered.

After the plating tank I rinse the parts with a spray bottle filled with distilled water ( all water used in the processes is distilled water!!!) I will probably go to a rinse bucket soon. they should look like this or better

After rinsing them I dip them in Caswell blue chromate. I really don't dip them. I hang them in the solution and swish them around for between 15-60 seconds. They will brighten up alot! The chromate tank needs to be at least 80d F to get quick results. Recently I went to running them with hot water baths to keep them warm and that has really helped. When it's warm outside they sit in holes on the far right side of my plating bench.

When it comes out of the blue chromate they will look like this

They almost look chromed. The are hatch dovetails for Cody's goon. They will stay silver. At this point I rinse them with the spray bottle again and hang them up. I reload the plating tank and when I get a chance I will dry them with the Milwaukee heat gun from the earlier picture. After I dry them good you can handle them. If you don't dry them with heat you need to let them hang overnight to dry or you will damage the finish.

If yellow zinc is required then before drying them and immediately after the blue chromate, I swish them in the yellow chromate for 15 secs exact! I use my phones stop watch. If you aren't consistent your plate color will vary. Find a time period that gives you the color you like based on the concentration of your chromate and stick with it. The blue chromate isn't as sensitive for time because it really doesn't change after it brightens up. After yellow chromate, dry as before...

@grannyknot

How's that? Questions? Any aspect I didn't cover?

[Patcon]

53 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Haha!! Oh well. Can't blame me for trying!! 

I'm glad you're getting such good results. Hope it continues!

Thanks. Me too! It was frustrating for a while but I kept coming back with the mind set of this being done in a commercial shop. It can't be this hard. So I started trying to make it simpler and figuring out how they would do it. They are not doing all the hand buffing I was doing. Too much labor...

If I keep at this I will build a plating barrel. Like on one of the sites I referenced early on in this thread. The real issue now is the time it takes to string parts and it takes 20-30 minutes to do 10 parts or so. So it takes a good bit of time to do any real amount of parts. If I had a plating barrel I could do 10x's the amount of parts in that 20-30 minutes and they would be constantly rotating so the coverage would be more even. I have several more cars to do so If I can get this car out out of the way I may add that to the project list. Finding the right size screen drum is the real trick. I am thinking a chlorine bucket maybe for a pool skimmer... hmmm

[grannyknot]

7 hours ago, Patcon said:

How's that? Questions? Any aspect I didn't cover?

Fantastic!  I can see the weaknesses in my procedure now. A bead blaster instead of wire wheels, Caswell plating solution instead of vinegar/epsom, heated/agitated tanks instead of room temp tanks. Are you rinsing between the blue and the yellow?  What kind of wood do you have drying there, looks like enough to do a big floor?

Thank you, that's a big help.

[Patcon]

2 hours ago, grannyknot said:

Fantastic!  I can see the weaknesses in my procedure now. A bead blaster instead of wire wheels, Caswell plating solution instead of vinegar/epsom, heated/agitated tanks instead of room temp tanks. Are you rinsing between the blue and the yellow?  What kind of wood do you have drying there, looks like enough to do a big floor?

I know a lot of people go the DIY chemical approach. I am not confident these solutions are that easy to reproduce, and Caswell support does make it easier to trouble shoot issues. I used a wire brush for a while but it is very labor intensive and difficult to do small bolts without launching them across the shop. I also think the wire wheel is much easier to contaminate versus the bead blaster. I was using a wire wheel after the blasting cabinet for a while but you have to use a light touch.

The wood is from a house I built last year. We took about 50 trees off the lot. Some pretty large. I found a sawyer to cut up four large pieces for me. I gave him the rest of the logs. There are two poplar logs that were about 24" across and two maple logs that are smaller. It needs another year or two of air drying before they are eligible for some wood working projects

[Patcon]

On 12/3/2017 at 6:12 AM, 240260280 said:

I looked up anode bag and lots of hits:  https://www.alliedplating.com/product/anode-bags/

Thanks, I just needed the "Hoover" to help me come up with the right search terms

[Patcon]

@Namerow

I believe you used "Moss Boss" as your anode. Did you get satisfactory results using this zinc? Did you have any issues with impurities? I have spent some time looking for zinc sheets and have no luck finding a good pure zinc sheet. I did some more plating today and got some mixed results. Late in the session I found if I lifted the parts up near the surface I got good results. I think my anodes are too small. They are starting to get thin any way. I have looked at Caswell but to get any decent sized plates gets expensive quick. If the Moss Boss works I will get some and try it out

[Namerow]

11 hours ago, Patcon said:

@Namerow

I believe you used "Moss Boss" as your anode. Did you get satisfactory results using this zinc? Did you have any issues with impurities? I have spent some time looking for zinc sheets and have no luck finding a good pure zinc sheet. I did some more plating today and got some mixed results. Late in the session I found if I lifted the parts up near the surface I got good results. I think my anodes are too small. They are starting to get thin any way. I have looked at Caswell but to get any decent sized plates gets expensive quick. If the Moss Boss works I will get some and try it out

ummm...  Can you define what you mean by, 'satisfactory'?  Sometimes my parts plated brilliantly. That included a few tough-to-do parts like the hatch strikers or the e-brake linkage 'equalizer'.  On other parts, the plating was what I would describe as indifferent.  Not terrible, but not award-winning either.  I cannot put my finger on the reason.  I produced very few results that look like what other members are having returned to them by commercial platers.  My best results were what I'll call 80-percenters.

As a general comment, my plating efforts took a noticeable step forward when I finally broke down and bought the Ca$well chemical for my electrolyte, replacing the DIY solution of vinegar and epsom salts that I let myself be tricked into using by some overly-enthusiastic motorcycle hobbyist website.  The change to the electrolyte was accompanied by borrowing a controllable current/controllable voltage power supply from our ever-generous friend, Grannyknot.  Only after making these two adjustments did I start to get worthwhile results.  And after that, I found that a regular dose of Ca$well's 'brightener' solution made the critical difference between a shiny vs. dull outcome.

'Moss Boss' comes in the form of a 4"-wide roll of thick foil.  I made hoops (by soldering the overlapping ends) whose diameter was slightly under the diameter of my electrolyte bucket.  I stacked three of the hoops, one on top of another, so that the entire inner wall of the bucket was lined. 

• The result was a 360-degree anode, which I hoped would mitigate masking issues during plating.  I suppose it did, but I didn't have the time or patience to compare this set-up with a uni-directional anode. 
• I do not recall experiencing problems with 'impurities'.  It's my understanding that a powdery, granular plate occurs on the surface of the part if you set your current too high.  But I wouldn't call that an impurity issue.

Moss Boss is relatively cheap, so I encourage you to try it.  If you can find it, that is.  It's disappeared from retailers' shelves here in Canada because it's considered to create unacceptable environmental (groundwater) issues.  A patient google search might turn up some manufacturer's info on purity level.

As you know from my previous commentaries, I came away from my DIY plating experiences somewhat less enthusiastic than when I started out.  My positive outcomes were very rewarding, but they went 50-50 with not-so-positive outcomes.  If I had been able to decide where I was going wrong, I would have kept at it, but I could just never figure out why some of my parts just wouldn't plate properly -- even when I took them all the way back to the blasting cabinet stage.  It was almost like certain regions of the part's surface had been poisoned by something (maybe residual impurities in my blasting media?). 

I did not get good results from using a wire (brass) wheel.  I suspect, the wires on the wheel were already contaminated by materials and grease/oil from previous, non-plating jobs and they just burnished that contamination into the surface of my about-to-be-plated parts.  Pickling after wire-wheeling didn't solve the problem.

Moral:  If you're going to use a blasting cabinet, start with fresh media and blast parts only after they've been de-greased and pre-pickled.  If you're going to use a wire wheel, buy a new one, de-grease it before use, and de-grease it from time to time during use. BTW, some people, as well as Ca$well, recommend a fibre wheel over a wire wheel (but I don't know why).

My sense is that, overall, the process is intolerant of what I'll call 'fouling' at any step along the way -- whether it's blasting, wire-wheeling, pickling, rinsing, wire hangers, or the electrolyte bath itself.  My fear is that once one of your steps gets fouled, you have to dump that liquid/media/material and start all over again.  The challenge, of course, is to figure out which step got fouled.  And, once you've figured that out, make sure that you don't carry the fouling back to the start of your chain.