Nickel Plating Solution Recipe Needed!

A. A Watts nickel formulation will give you a smooth matte plate:
40-8-6 ounces per gallon of nickel sulfate, nickel chloride, boric acid, respectively; pH 4.0.

It may depend on what you mean by "smooth": bright? leveled? reflective? Recipes are proprietary, and I don't know of anyone who would give this to you. You can buy or get samples from the major supply houses.

A. Hi Rachel. Bright nickel plating baths require a "carrier", a "brightener", an "auxiliary brightener" and a "wetting agent". If you are willing to settle for old fashioned, non-proprietary, nickel addition agents, please see ASM Handbook, vol.5 =>

It has info on using the older addition agents like saccharin, paratoluene, or several other alternatives as the carrier; thiourea, reduced fuchsin or others as brighteners; sodium allyl sulfonate or 1,4-butyne diol as auxiliary brighteners; and sodium lauryl sulfate as a wetter/anti-pit agent.

Considering the complexity of formulating your own addition agents though, it just seems a lot simpler to buy the solutions (and get better results too!). But a good alternative may be to just plate the nickel dull, and polish/buff it to a luster (which is what they did 100 years ago before these addition agent systems were developed :-)

Good luck.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
finishing.com
Pine Beach, New Jersey

The person that invents a way will be in the same good position as in finding a genie in a lamp. But the lamp was probably plated with sulfate nickel (how would you release the genie if you didn't have to polish once in a while?).

A. About 20-30 amperes per square foot, average.

Hi, Rachel,

It looks like you might be sort of winging it without a plating book or hands-on guidance. If so, please see if your library can offer some of our recommended "must-have" books.

I hope I didn't read things wrong and offend you, but while this forum can be useful for answering specific questions, it's not the best way to introduce people to electroplating because books are "tutorial", proceeding from scratch to deep knowledge over the course of a couple hundred pages, whereas web postings tend to either be repetitive to a maddening degree or over our heads'; plus readers may wrongly assume they can just jump in without safety and environmental hazards, since they tend to go unmentioned in a thread like this (as evidenced by the first 7 entries)-- whereas they are prominently mentioned in most books.

Tom, you know this topic better than me, but I thought 40 ASF was the right current density for bright Watts Nickel?

I am happy that you are plating better. Sorry you don't like the service.

Dear Rachel:

Sharing information is the very purpose of what we're doing, but we refer people to books for more efficient learning and to increase the likelihood that they understand what the hazards are and the appropriate safety protocol. In my own town recently a hobbyist killed himself at his kitchen table with a copper plating solution, and put the responding police officer in the hospital -- so I don't like to just launch into offering recipes without mentioning safety.

Electroplating involves haz-mat chemicals. Chromium plating solution and formaldehyde addition agents for nickel plating are known carcinogens; the cyanide required in many plating solutions is among the most powerful and fastest-acting poisons known; numerous compounds when added to acid or vice versa will release deadly and fast-acting poison gas. You can release deadly quantities of chlorine gas with just a power supply and nickel plating salts.

Then there is disposal. Ecologically-oriented hobbyists can lose their idealism when the price to properly dispose of a small shelf of chemicals runs into 5 figures. What of secondary containment? One beaker of chrome plating solution broken on the garage floor can poison the wells for blocks around.

Best of luck in your plating work, but please consider a haz-mat training seminar if you haven't had one and will be continuing to mix chemicals. Good luck.

opinion! Electroplating is very hazardous and I hope that morons do not try to attempt it. The person should be given full training before trying to electroplate anything.

A. Hello, Greg.

If you only need a thin coating, you can purchase a "liquid gold" immersion plating solution =>
This requires little beyond heating the solution in a microwave and wiping the inside of the goblet with the solution . Please see our FAQ "Silver Plating at Home" for more information on immersion plating. Good luck!

Gold can only be chemically dissolved in cyanide, aqua regia, or proprietary chelates, so dissolving your gold coin would probably involve hazardous chemicals. Good luck.

A. Gold Plating the inside of a Silver chalice does not require dissolving gold into any solution whatsoever.

If you want a truly stunning surface, forget electroplating, use "SPUTTERING".

Sputtering is "evaporating" a coil of a metal so that it "spray paints" itself onto a target. This is how you make optical coatings onto things like sunglasses and lenses.

Mostly sputtering is performed in a vacuum chamber because the element being plated reacts with the air (usually aluminum or silver). In this case it is not a problem...gold is virtually inert. Additionally, your target "surrounds" the sputtering coil, so it will deposit in one shot.

Picture this: You take a small coil of gold wire and suspend it inside your goblet on the end of steel electrodes. Then you pass perhaps a couple of Amps at about 2KHz through the gold gold and it vaporizes. It will adhere to the silver surface readily as if it were spray painted on there. The hardness of the surface will be low.

Note: It would be better if you made a Plexiglas disc to hold the electrodes and cover the end of the chalice, so you could put it under vacuum (the air in the chalice will remove heat from the aerosol gold molecules and make the surface less shiny).

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

Thanks, Russell.

Yes, sputtering of gold is a viable alternative to electroplating in many circumstances; and it's ideally suited when combinations of coatings are applied, like gold plus titanium nitride on jewelry. Probably many more watch cases and dials are sputtered than electroplated.

But I question it being a viable alternative for someone like Greg who wants one single specialty item coated. No shop to my knowledge offers sputtering services on one-off items, and what does a sputtering chamber cost ($500K?).

Regards,

Hi, Joseph. We had to delete the company name you quoted at their request, but people can do a search for companies marketing to hobby platers. Thanks!

Your assumption that amateurs are up to date and professionals are out of date is a bit silly; it's like saying only amateur mechanics can fix Hybrids, not professionals; or only midwives can do laparoscopic surgery, not surgeons :-)

- Your "old time platers" visit Capitol Hill every year to meet with Congress (NASF Washington Forum) to try to get laws like the "Categorical Standards" modified, which state that every drop of water associated with plating is regulated as hazardous even if you can drink it.
- Your "old time platers" travel the country to attend expositions/conferences (Sur/Fin 20xx, Coatings 20xx, Southern Metal Finishing) on new technology which might ease the regulatory and environmental burden. They meet monthly (AESF Branch meetings, NAMF Chapter meetings) to insure that they hear every presentation on each new technology like trivalent chrome plating, white bronze as a replacement for nickel, zinc alloys as a replacement for cadmium, and cyanide-free silver.
- Your "old time platers" sponsor research every year (AESF Research Sponsors program), paying for the university programs which study and improve plating processes.
- Your "old time platers" write the peer-reviewed journal articles (Plating & Surface Finishing, Metal Finishing, Journal of Applied Surface Finishing) which keep us up to date with the latest developments.
- Your "old time platers" have training & certification programs to test whether they actually know their stuff (Certified Electro-Finisher, Master Surface Finisher) vs. who is just talking out of their axx.
- Your "old time platers" sponsor exactly the high school science fairs you talk about (Milwaukee Science Fair, Chicago Science Fair), as well as contests for aspiring auto designers (The Bright Design Challenge).

Meanwhile people selling plating out of their garage are in violation of countless laws including failure to have a NPDES permit, failure to follow DOT registration requirements in transporting their waste to the dump, failure to register the start date for their hazardous waste accumulation, failure to test that everything going to the drain is within the required ppm range, failure to register for the MACT program, and failure to alert their neighbors of the chemicals they have on hand ("Community Right to Know Act"). If a neighborhood child develops cancer of any type for any reason, and her parents find out you were chrome plating in your garage, God help you.

Everyone is in favor of "newer, safer, environmentally responsible ways"; but talk is cheap and it is your "old time platers" who prove their environmental responsibility by maintaining all of the required permits, which in turn means they are regularly inspected by the regulatory authorities, while the garage platers don't register, remain ignorant of the law, hide below the radar, and guess that they are not doing too much damage, although they often lack the knowledge to actually know. The worst case of plating pollution that I am aware of in a 45-year career was from a chrome shop in a 2-car garage. It became a superfund site, and the legal fees (before the actual clean up costs even begin) is in the multi-millions.

Your turn.

Regards,

Hi, Glenn.

Future readers will decide for themselves whether it is you or I most guilty of exaggeration :-)

Regards,

It's pretty funny to see a complaint about safety concerns. Plating uses a ton of chemistry, and if you've had formal education on it, you know that certain chemicals can harm you. But, what you don't know is just how badly or quickly unfamiliar chemical solutions can hurt you and others.

So good, you want to plate a doorknob? Well, I hope everyone gives the warnings before someone goes and harms themselves, their family, and their community!

Great advice is on this site, and the warnings are part of what's so great about it.

Hi, Michael. I thought Tom did pretty much answer this in his first response. But to clarify --

The most common nickel plating solution is Watts' Nickel. It consists of:
- 225 to 300 g/l NiSO4.6H2O (nickel sulfate hexahydrate)
- 37 to 53 g/l NiCl2.6H2O (nickel chloride hexahydrate)
- 30 to 45 g/l H3BO3 (boric acid).

It is operated at 140° F, and a current density of up to 40 ASF.

Without brightening agents, this will not be bright as plated; you'll have to buff it for smoothness and brightness.

The very easiest way to clean onesy-twosy items is to scrub them with a solution of powdered pumice, a little detergent, and warm water, using an old-fashioned tampico scrub brush. Best of luck.

Regards,

Several years ago I started plating as part of a small artisan workshop. I restrict myself to the less hazardous salts and find other alternative non-plating routes where necessary. I have a growing library of plating books and downloaded academic papers. I am not a chemist by education (physicist).

My operation is small (25 litres is a lot of electrolyte in my workshop) bunded containers of course, 1st wash pull out is recycled back into the electrolyte to replace evaporation losses (almost zero loss to the environment) and I am prepared to pay for disposal (my political allegiance is Green).

I understand the frustrations of amateurs wanting to do an adhoc job but as I progress and improve more I fully understand their concerns. The idea of folks flushing nickel or worse down drains, getting exposed to things they should not and so on is scary and its not always the person doing the plating who will pay the price.

I have invested time and money into making sure that my set up is environmentally sound, even though I am the only worker I still have documented work flows and practises not only to keep me on the straight and narrow but to avoid impact on my finished articles - I have a motivation in the sense that it is a small artisan business ( not a plate shop )and I have every reason to continue to refine, improve and learn and also the local authorities have the right to come round and check me out - I am just not sure a weekender has the same motivation.

Sorry to sound like I am sucking up to the pro's and of course if they inspected my set up they still might find fault despite all my labours and research. Thats precisely why I agree with them and wish to continue to learn from them not for a day or two but year in and year out.

Ted - keep on your current course you are right imho, you try to tread the difficult path between encouraging kids with school projects yet pointing out the environmental and safety pit falls. Unfortunately we live in an age of knee jerk reactions and people who have had no training or relevant education who think they know better than the experts. Despite photographs of the surface of Mars or the cure of many types of cancer and miracle eye operations the average Joe still thinks he knows better than the "experts" who achieved those things - in his/her view Doctors are still talking out of their bottoms and news of man's impact on the environment is nothing more than chinese whispers I am fed up with it and long for the times when people listened to those who know rather than those who shout loudest or get on their indignant soap box and share their "facts" with others. Experts are wrong sometimes but at least they were not guessing - anyone can toss a coin and be right some of time but science and civilisation has rejected guessing in favour of knowledge and it works most of the time.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, Jon.

Regards,

A. Hi Ryan. An issue that we may not have yet made clear is that waste regulations are based on two things: what the waste is, but also where it came from. Even before there was an EPA, plating shop wastes were regulated by the Department of the Interior, which selected electroplating as the very first industry to be subjected to 'categorical standards' (in other words, effluent limitations based not just on hazards, but based on the industry which generated them).

Plating shops who discharge to a municipal waste water system most definitely must comply with EPA discharge standards! But small custom jewelry designers might not be considered 'plating shops' (I can't make that ruling). If you are discharging to a municipal waste water system, they are charged with enforcing whatever are the applicable standards for your operation, so that's who to contact. Although I suspect that most small custom jewelry designers don't register, I think you might be considered a plating/metal finishing shop. Good luck.

Regards,