Caswell Plating

[Patcon]

@grannyknot

I do still plate some items, but I have some larger items that I can't plate. My tanks aren't large enough and my power supply isn't large enough. I am still unsure that my at home plating is a durable as professional plating. I sometimes have Caswell pieces that develop "white rust". I am unsure if that is a problem with my method or just the limitations of the safer chemicals. So I am going to send them out and I will get a charge for a whole rack, so I am trying to pull some things together to fill the rack up. I might use a little heat and try to get the plastic pieces out of the buckets.

[ETI4K]

I can't get to mine to check, but couldn't we machine (mill/lathe) or 3D print the plastic parts?  I know they wouldn't look OEM, but they'd serve their purpose.

Furthermore, I'm certain the rivets (as seen in the previous pics of the hatch and door parts) can be made, though staking them could be rough.

[Patcon]

I don't know enough about 3d printing to know how well that would work as a solution

[Patcon]

So I will update this thread so it's all here too.

I did some plating a few weeks ago and it blistered badly. I'm not sure why. I could have been my plating tank was heating properly or too much brightener.

In any event, I stripped it all down in citric acid and reprepped them for plating. This time instead of using tape to protect the chromed shafts, I used heat shrink.

They did ok this time but some of it came out really pink. I left them in my blue chromate a little longer and only left them in the yellow for about 20 seconds. I was using a heat gun to dry and cure them. The last one I let air dry to see if the heat was causing the blushing.

I believe the one on the bottom is the one I allowed to air dry

 

The one on the far right is the air dry one. I do believe it changed when I allowed it to air dry but I was changing my chromate time too so it's hard to know the cause definitively. One point is, if you use heat shrink or even tape, it needs to be cut off ASAP. I had one that had some liquid still in it and it corroded the fresh plating where it leaked out later. Since all of this is concealed in the cowl, I'm not going to worry about it.

[Patcon]

I was trying to do some plating and not getting good results. So I checked the resistance on my leads. The hot leads had decent high resistance, So I redid them and used stainless clips. I also put my ground directly to the copper stringer wires.

The plating did improve. I am still having some challenges with brightener. It helps but too much causes blistering, Still working on the solution

 

[Patcon]

My plating tank was pretty cloudy so Shelley and I filtered it today

I have no idea what this is, I filtered out. My wife thinks it just garbage. She's a chemist. I have no idea. I did plate today but it took a while to get acceptable results. Lot's of brightener. I'm still not pleased with all of it.

I bought a 40 Amp power supply last week because my 10Amp just isn't enough sometime. The problem with the 40 Amp power supply is it has no resolution a lot amperages. So for little things I still have to use the 10 amp power supply. I have new zinc anodes coming this week. So I will tweak the tank some more. I tried to plate a carb water bypass tube today. It didn't do right. I probably need a different shaped tank to plate some of these long narrow parts

[KenFirch]

I recently converted my Caswell plating setup to a rolling workbench.  I'll get more use out of this for the space it takes up in my shop.  And I've found a place in town to use for plating instead of trying to do it myself.  I've found that all things need to be near perfect for good results with Caswell, and it's a time burner.  But it was fun while it lasted.

Edited Sunday at 06:22 AM by KenFirch