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-----Newcomer wants advice
2000
I need an advice. Please, be patient and read my history...
My hobby is electronics, just like my grandfather since 40 years ago. He deceased fifteen years ago (I was 12 then), but I still remember him talking about the benefits of electroplating printed-circuits boards. As long as I know, he used to do some kind of home electroplating, but I can't tell exactly what it was. Two or three years ago, I read some electronic's magazine articles teaching how to silver plate electronics circuits, with recipes, including brush-plating. I've searched some old notebooks from my grandfather and found some old recipes from him, too, not just recipes to electroplate circuits' boards, but other types of electroplating, too. By now, I'm considering to try myself electroplate my printed circuit boards. I found useful information in the internet (information is more important than just the recipes), remarkably in this site. I want to make it very responsibly; so, I decided to do the following: - I dropped out all my grandfather's recipes. All of them includes using things poisonous like cyanide or chromic acid, and I will not use nothing like this; - I will not try to make processes that uses poisonous reagents, nor even complicated processes that involves many kinds of solutions, reactions, etc.
From all the recipes I got, only one remain, that I read in the electronic's magazine. All the reagents it uses, I can remember their name and I know that they were in the chemistry-kit I had when I was 10. So, I think that those chemicals aren't so dangerous. The recipe is something like this: - Potassium iron cyanide (I don't know if this is the correct English name): (FeCN)K3 - Potassium carbonate - 30 g - sodium carbonate ⇦ on eBay or Amazon] - 40 g - Silver nitrate - 30 g - Pure silver electrode - Two or three AA batteries - 1 litter (0.28 gallon) distilled water The magazine's recipe says that, using the silver electrode, the silver from it will replace the silver from the silver nitrate in the solution, and so, this solution could be used indefinitely, for years to go. It's just one litter (one-quarter gallon), so I can easily keep it in a bottle or something like, as I do with the iron perchloride solution I use to make printed circuit boards, I use the same glass pot for more than 10 years. I'm not looking for 100% efficiency, nor I want the process run fast. Safety is my main concernment.
Is there you think I should know? Should I desist? Is it really safe? Thanks in advice... Mario
Manoel de Paula Guimaraes- Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
2000
The first chemical you rattled off contains cyanide. Used in an incorrect way, that chemical can produce cyanide gas which is lethal if inhaled. I do not believe that you have the technical qualifications to work with lethal chemicals.
This website often receives questions about inexperienced people wanting to work with industrial chemicals in their home. We always advise that plating at home is a bad idea. Not only could you end up harming or killing or yourself, you have the potential to release toxic pollutants into your local environment.
Perhaps you should look into working for an established company that is involved in circuit board plating.
Tim Neveau
Rochester Hills, Michigan
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