Sombitch.. 1hr later.. I used woodglue, a little water and the graphite powder. Painted it on and away it goes.
Problem I had when I tried plating was copper would build up in little spikes and crystals. You need a special chemical that inhibits spike formation. Its proprietary and there are no great replacements that you can make yourself. And ofc it's a very expensive chemical...
Nahh.. no spikes. I'm betting you had too much power. This is 2qts water, 16oz root kill, 16ml battery acid and a teaspoon of poop softener. Running about .5volts. So far so good. My plan is I hope I can solder this stuff together. Jury is still out on that one. If it does spike, I can whack it back with a wheel and press on. The expensive stuff I saw was a brightener. That's what the miralax is for.
wow.. It soldiered very easy. It's like stained glass, just fat stained glass with a hell of a lot more visual appeal. I can see this working very well with cast bronze.
That looks great!, it's worked really well, I've never heard of using laxative as a plating grain refiner, mainly stuff like saccharin and artificial vanilla. Edit, I'd also used radiator coolant concentrate (ethylene glycol) and laxative is polyethylene glycol.
Hmm.. So it's the glycol that does the work. I've got tons of it in liquid. We use it to deice aircraft. I guess I'll need to read the bottle next time I jack with it. This did work way better than I expected it to. When a matrix of this is built and locked into the cast bronze, I don't really see it going anywhere. In all fairness, wide foil tape would probably accomplish the same job faster and with less mess, but just doesn't look right. I'm kind of on the fence with electroforming too.
Electroforming is a lot of stuffing around all in all. Mass production assembly line style with say four chunks plating and five copper pipe electrodes (one in the middle) so the plating "throw" is even, would speed up production to four chunks at a time.
Yeah I think I tried it at 5 or 6 volts. Not 0.35 v like you. Looks good. How thick is the build up? It looks quite thick but is difficult to tell for sure. They make conductive spray paint and regular paint. Basically powdered copper that can be sprayed on and then plated.
yeah 5 or 6 was probably too much on something small.. I think it depends on the sq inches you are trying to electroform as to where you set the power. I started at .35 and it was really slow. After I bumped this thing up to 1volt it worked good for this. As the copper grows, the amps start to climb and I did get some pointy things on the sharp edges. I think thats the time when ya have to back the volts back down or drop the amps. Not sure. I let it go for about 12hrs. I would guess the thickness is about 1/32". I suppose theoretically, you could just keep plowing on the metal. I saw something interesting. Someone took wax sheets and formed it into what looked like a purse or curved box. They painted the graphite into a pattern over the wax. It was electroformed pretty heavy and they later melted out the wax. hmm. neat technique. Google electroformed BONG and prepare to be blown away. There is some seriously wild stuff going in that world. Had a thought last night. Instead of the copper pipes, what if sil bronze rods were used?
Depends on what you're trying to do, electro-refine the copper out of the bronze, or bronze plate the chunks? If you just wanted to use the bronze as a source of copper, it should work with your present set-up. It'll probably just be slower and take more power. Bronze plating the chunks? I know "bronzed" baby shoes were quite popular many moons ago so bronze plating non-metallic objects obviously can be done, just not sure what the method behind the madness would be. Don
Thanks Don. I thought it might move bronze over, but it would just pull copper over through the solution. didnt think that one through.
I must admit I have not been following this part of the thread as closely as I should. It appears to me that there is no agitation of the solution? In a normal R and D type plating setup the solution is placed in a beaker with a liquid heater in it. That is placed on a stirring plate. I know nothing of the chemistry other than they use plating salts and control Ph. Joe
Pissing around like I am here, agitation isn't really necessary. If I did a ton of this, I would setup on a heated base with agitation. The process starts having problems below 70degrees from what I have read.
I know very little about this process other than I had a customer back when I was working who did electroplating. They used a magnetic pill in a beaker to stir the mix. This was to remove the equivalent of slag. Letting the pure metal bond. I do recall that this was happening at or just over 100 degrees F. Joe
Thanks Joe. I know even less. There is a place for this process, but probably not in this application. I'm casting more pieces now to be sent out to a guy in California that polish dips cut crystal as samples. While not 100% true to the form, this will be a good compromise for this particular lamp and I can get it off the bench and on to other stuff I've got brewing. This is lead glass and they say has the best results for polishing. The only downside I see, it offers less vibrant colors unless it's really thick. Where'd you go to David? I figured out the conversion 4.15 x 1 works well. I weighed fine silica and did the math. My brain hurts!
Jason: There's a post over on Model Engine Maker, http://www.modelenginemaker.com/index.php/topic,8889.15.html, that you might be interested in taking a look at. You're both copper plating onto non-conductive surfaces. He's done some experimenting with voltages/currents/agitation to get consistent/controllable layer thickness in the copper plate. Don
Jason: Just googled "plating with bronze" and got a couple of interesting hits: This one looked simple and easy? (But probably expensive.) This one could lead down several other rabbit holes if you follow the other links. https://www.finishing.com/243/16.shtml Have fun, Don
Meh... Think this is going to require a call to gaffer. Lackluster colors are BS in this day and age. I think I'm going to bang out a couple in 104coe Effetre and see what happens. The color pallet is better, but not being lead might be a problem.
Is there some sort of crap on those, and that's why are they so dull? I'm assuming that's what you're talking about when you say lackluster? If you were going for an aged and weathered look, they're already there. Don
