Bubble bubble toil and trouble......plating my original vented gas cap
Zinc Plating
- Thread starter 70lt1z28
- Start date
Bandit723
Veteran Member
What electrolyte solution are you using?
Magnesium Sulfate....AKA Epsom Salts. This is dissolved in white vinegar with table sugar as a plating modulator-buffer.
How will you get a zinc plate from a solution without zinc in it?
You first put zinc metal pieces in the solution and soak overnight. This corrodes the zinc and loads the solution with zinc ions. Then, when actually doing the plating, you connect the + from the power supply to submerged zinc strips and the - to the part being plated and adjust the voltage to ~3v. Actually, you want 65ma per square inch of whats being plated. You want at least as much charged zinc strips submerged as what you are plating, but its pretty forgiving. If you use up all the zinc in the solution, it just stops plating.
When you first pull the part out, it looks bad. Very dull gray. You take some fine steel wool and rub gently and it shines right up. If any place didn't plate, just clean the part and put back in the solution. No need to re-strip the part. The biggest challenge is getting the submerged zinc pieces placed evenly around the part. It kind of works line of sight. I did my coil bracket and the inside didn't plate until I put a charged piece on the inside. Then it worked good. The gas cap was interesting. I didn't want to submerge for fear of messing up the internals but wanted to plate up to the outer edge, so staging it took some time. Then, there is a small relief area in the middle that trapped a bit of air and hydrogen gas (produced during plating). I had to roll the part a bit to release the gas bubble.
When you first pull the part out, it looks bad. Very dull gray. You take some fine steel wool and rub gently and it shines right up. If any place didn't plate, just clean the part and put back in the solution. No need to re-strip the part. The biggest challenge is getting the submerged zinc pieces placed evenly around the part. It kind of works line of sight. I did my coil bracket and the inside didn't plate until I put a charged piece on the inside. Then it worked good. The gas cap was interesting. I didn't want to submerge for fear of messing up the internals but wanted to plate up to the outer edge, so staging it took some time. Then, there is a small relief area in the middle that trapped a bit of air and hydrogen gas (produced during plating). I had to roll the part a bit to release the gas bubble.
Thanks for the explanation!
Nice work Dave....let's see the finished product!
Nice job Dave. 
