Home zinc plating .

[fastfredracing]

Im starting to play with cars again. I was getting ready to send a batch of fasteners out to be plated, but then, thought how cool would it be to be able to do it at home .
Anyboyd tried one of those home plating kits from eastwood, or caswell?
Were you happy with the results ?

[flatbutt]

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[A930Rocket]

Paging Shaun!

[masraum]

Yep, Shaun would be the man to talk to. I'm sure he can tell you all about the best way, what's possible, what's not possible, what sucks, etc....

[unclebilly]

One of the girls I worked with bought an Eastwood nickel plating kit many years back. We used it a bit for coating fuel cell interconnects. It was ok…

[RobFrost]

I've used chemicals from a company in the UK called Youplate, I'm sure they're much the same. Zinc chloride solution if I remember, with a zinc electrode. They do something you add to make it brighter.

Then once plated, they have a passivator which you dip it in for 2 minutes to dye it yellow. They make a big thing about chromium IV being a big cause of cancer and their passivator eliminates that, which I recommend rather than the traditional chromium IV based chemicals.

Results were pretty good. I just plated with a car battery charger and I think results would have been brighter with a voltage accurately calculated based upon the surface area being plated. When I layed it down too fast, it was less shiny.

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[fanaudical]

My recollection is that zinc plating of fasteners with "good steel" requires a bake process following plating to prevent hydrogen embrittlement and subsequent premature fatigue failures. You can probably get away from baking on cosmetic parts, but I wouldn't do it on fasteners...

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Fred, the Tech forum has a ton of threads on folks doing their own plating. My understanding is it takes some time to dial in the chemistry and equipment to get good results and the more you do, the more to have to keep on top of the chemistry.

I think it's one of those things that's cool the first time or the first time you get it right. Years ago I had a rush batch and the plater had to give it back all wired which means we had to carefully clip or untwist a ton of parts. Huge pain in the balls, at least for a sizeable batch. I can't even imagine wiring up a ton of hardware.

I only do cadmium for the most part so have to have it done at a grandfathered-in plater.

I would think you have high quality platers that charge a reasonable price in PA. Stay away from by the pound places. Try to find places that do aerospace and medical as they will give you the best results. Always bring platers surgically clean parts.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

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Same... Fresh Cad plated parts on a restored car always look good.

Is it possible to clean up older Cad Plated parts? After cleaning dip them in something exotic maybe?

[asphaltgambler]

^^^my experience = no. The finish is microscopic thin, and any attempt to clean or preserve just removes what's left. My need for stuff like that is very infrequent, so I try to buy replacement small parts already done. For me it's a matter of time, energy or more to the point, lack of spare time to devote to DIY. Larger stuff, I have to track someone down, but I don't think there's anyone in my area that still does this.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by fanaudical

My recollection is that zinc plating of fasteners with "good steel" requires a bake process following plating to prevent hydrogen embrittlement and subsequent premature fatigue failures. You can probably get away from baking on cosmetic parts, but I wouldn't do it on fasteners...

We have 2 places and one of them does the heat treatment as a standard. The other no necessarily if at all. It's gold zinc, not cadmium. I thought cad was on the hit list for the whole US.

[herr_oberst]

I've always wanted to try home plating. It looks doable.