I finally got going on my long desired nickel plating: I spent 36 or so hours "cooking" the nickle acetate, then changed the setup and tried a test piece.
I needed nickel and am starting with 3/32 nickel arc welding rods with the flux removed.
The Acetate "Base" is Heinz 5% vinegar with a pinch or two of salt added for better conductivity.
I wanted this to be portable so the "power supply" is my power source for recharging USB devices - an old 12V UPS battery, A car lighter socket, and a USB adapter;
To that I plug in a regulated Power supply I got off Amazon -
https://www.amazon.com/PEMENOL-Adjustab ... 52KR?th=1 - You know you can find nearly anything USB powered? I even found a USB powered aquarium air pump and stone - to be added later for larger plating jobs to agitate the acetate...
I made a spacer from a piece of a Glad lunch meat cover, punched with 3/32 holes using a Whitney Jr. #5 punch This worked perfectly fine, but I'll make a few more in different sizes with a bit of an angle left on so they are more rigid.
The top of jar bits on the rods are to help keep the rods from just falling over. I can make a copper half loop to really lock then down, but this can't be done for the acetate brewing as the rods are positive and neg, anode and cathodes, simply loading the vinegar with nickle.
I used test leads to make the connections; I added 14 ga. "lugs" with a small loop bent on to the PS so I can use simple clip on test leads:
A note on the Test leads- These are too heavy and tend to drag things around. I have some super light ones that won't pull on things and I'm concerned that I not short the stuff inside the plating jar, so at these voltages and amps some really thin light ones create less drag, I will also add a fuse to the circuit, so If I do short it then the fuse dies, not my PS!
Voltage set to as close to 3V I could:
And immediate fizzing:
The amperage slowly climbed as the nickel content of the Acetate climbed, to about .0078. This "cooked" for about 36 hours:
About noon today I connected my smaller solar panel as it was handy. I could have setup a charger, but in the spirit of "Off grid - Portable" I opted for solar -I didn't need to - it had only dropped about a quarter of a volt for the entire 30 hour "burn" to that point.
After the 36 hours give or take, I decided the nickel acetate was done (Nice and green) and removed the negative and clipped the two bars together:
The Test Subject, a house key - I cleaned it, fine wire wheeled it, cleaned some more, Final clean in Vinegar, and "polished" with Paper towel not touching it directly with my fingers.
Then hung it in the jar of Acetate so its not touching the nickel bars:
Immediate fizz:
It was still at the acetate cooking voltage and the amps jumped to >0.2A - so I turned it down :
This dropped as the plating progressed:
I checked and turned it every ten min for a full hour and pulled it, cleaned it and polished it:
Finished key on the left, a factory plated key on the right. I'm happy with the results for a first piece:
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