We should all do more of this. It's been too long. I did some copper plating in high school. I was somehow able to convince the chemistry teacher that instead of doing my class work I should be sitting in the corner playing with nitric acid and a lawnmower battery. Then I turned it into a demonstration for speech class. I was terrified of public speaking and having a project like this made it much easier.
I wonder if you let the zinc/vinegar solution sit for a week or two the zinc would be better dissolved. It may make the texture of the plating a bit smoother. I really don't know, it's just a thought.
That wasn't a pure zinc ingot, was it? Guessing a Zamak alloy. You need pure metal to have it dissolve nicely. The black powder is the copper that's not dissolving, and aluminum is probably not soluble in acetic, but corrodes to the hydroxide, leaving more gunk. Sulfuric acid is cheaply available as drain cleaner, and hydrochloric acid (sold as muriatic acid) as well. Both will attack zinc metal nice and quickly. Sulfuric: make a 20% solution by pouring the acid slowly into five times as much water, with rapid mixing (this acid is the reason for the "do as you oughta" rhyme!). Hydrochloric: straight 31.45% is pretty hot for zinc, so dilute it by half (it's already a solution, so it won't heat up when you add water, don't worry about it), then dissolve metal in it. Once you have a solution, either one can be dehydrated to pure crystalline salts if you like. Zinc sulfate crystallizes as the heptahydrate, the same crystal structure as magnesium and iron(II) (epsom salts and copperas/green vitriol). So, don't allow those elements into solution, or they will crystallize along with the zinc. Zinc chloride is deliquescent (absorbs moisture from the air so strongly, it forms a solution), so needs to be heated to crystallize as the tetrahydrate or thereabouts. Once you have most of the crystals dropped out, pour off the leftover solution (which probably contains unused acid and extra junk; use however you like), rinse the crystals with a little water (or better yet, denatured alcohol), and dry on a paper towel. However you do it, you want a far stronger solution than what you've shown here. At least, to get reasonable current density (and therefore deposition rate). Any time you're making hydrogen at the cathode, you're going too fast. Hydrogen bubbles are bad because they block the surface and ruin the deposit. Definitely do use distilled or RO or DI water, and chemicals as pure as you care to get them. Clean the anode and cathode of oils, rust and oxides, and other contamination. I don't know offhand what's good for zinc, in terms of leveling and brightening agents, but there are some out there. Possibly thiourea works (in an acid solution). These chemicals are hard to identify (lots of trade secrets :( ), and even harder to come by (without buying the industrial formulas a barrel at a time). Thiourea at least works well with copper. I do recommend getting experience this way, it's a good experiment at least. Use copper sulfate (nearly concentrated solution), a bit of sulfuric acid, sometimes a bit of chloride content (a dash of hydrochloric acid?), and a few drops of thiourea solution. (Tarn-X contains thiourea. Off the shelf source -- bingo!!) Plating rate should be pretty reasonable, and the solution should be very conductive, barely needing a volt. (Zinc will need more like 2-3V of course.)
it was advertised as pure zinc, but i dont mind as long as it gets the job done. and thanks for the input, i plan to slowly refine my process until i get something that works for what i want.
Tim Williams hey thank you Tim, u saved me lots of jabbed in the balls. not meant 4 me but very informative and enough to get me to a good start. got fresh zinc from batt
Let me use your presence and ask you how would you electroplate the inside of aluminium bottle. I'm researching it for a week and it seems too complicated to even make a proper zincate sollution without cyanide and other exotic sounding stuff. BTW I have sodium hydroxide ready and some zinc from wheel weights. I'm thinking now that I'll lose my otherwise antiviral zinc for something looking like a sure failure. I'm thinking about carburizing it instead. I want to seal a peace of leather inside with a clay plug and leave it in a fire for couple of hours. Hopefuly it will not melt. Aluminium cookware has many advantages over stainless pots. Why dont they plate it with gold or something? It would be perfect and finaly safe. I've read they do it with electroless nickel first. then gold. I've got other things to do tho. Like working 🙂 I just want my flask safe asap.
You have your wires backwards....+ (red) on the piece you want to coat. You clip the - (black) to the Zinc plate. You don't need to soak it, or try to dissolve it. The chemistry will do the work. Electrolysis to remove rust works just like this except you put the + (red) on a sacrificial piece of metal and the - (black) on the rusty piece. You add water and soda wash. When zinc plating you use the same solution except you add vinegar; thus, water, soda wash, and vinegar for zinc plating, and the + (red) wire goes on the piece that you want the zinc or rust to end up. More amps the faster the process goes. This releases hydrogen which is extremely volatile/explosive. Do this outside. Good luck. PS- if you don't like the smell of vinegar, you might not want to take a big sniff of it as soon as you take off the cap. lol
10x 4 sharing. i need this 4 gabions mesh so the finish does not matter 2 much 4 me. nice 4 showing the amps and voltage. i tried today some copper plating at 12v/5a, no need 2 say it did not work
I'm not sure if what you have there is plain distilled white vinegar or "cleaning" vinegar. I recently discovered cleaning vinegar, which seems to just be distilled white vinegar with a little higher concentration of acetic acid. You might give it a shot.
Pickling vinegar is 7% but I think if you freeze vinegar that you can scoop out the ice and concentrate the acetic acid. It would be interest to find out.
You are pretty cool, SUBSCRIBED NOW I want to see what happens if I freeze those lil fast food vinegar packets and see if the water will freeze and leave acetic acid. I don't go to fast food joints though. Lol On with the binge watching in Alberta, Canada.
You could say that, the elctrons are moving from the negative to the positive, but the charge is generally considered to "move" from positive to negative.
Powdered sugar is likely to have anti-caking agents in it, not sure what else. To get the inner areas to plate better you need line-of-sight between surfaces, which would likely require an external fixture to keep the plate from touching the part and shorting. But I've yet to try this or electrolysis myself, so I'm just speaking from what I've gleaned over time.
Inter-Alia, due to the shape of UR objects (sharp edges & shielding) alkaline zinc is the way to go for galvanize. This alkaline bath is simply zinc oxide powder dissolved in lye and it has better “throwing power” than the alternative which would be a acidic zinc chloride. If you completely disassemble the object then acid zinc chloride would be beneficial. In plating - you can make your own zinc chloride bath by dissolving zinc metal in pool acid till no more dissolves, and it is perhaps the easiest for DIY experiments. Cleanliness of the metal is paramount. In sand blast - how clean is that sand anyway - is it virgin or used. Consider glass beads instead? you need a cleaning cycle prior to galvanize eg. 5 % HCL dip followed by distilled water rinse. But, as a practical DIY matter you will get much better results in general via powder coat. For DIY powdercoat option see Eastwood.
I stopped this @ 2:44 to comment. I was and are wondering if you will crack your garage floor???? Woooow...At 3:19, you have that fantastic old blow lamp! Ok we are at the end of the video, I really enjoyed it and your experimenting around! Thanks for posting.
If you Sandblast that thing, the finish in rough, you need to sand it yo a shinny finish before starting the cinc plating process, also after plating, you can polish that thing to make it look really nice.
Soak the steel part in vinegar for a day or two to dissolve any rust, even in the pits. Wash it with soap & water, dip it in dilute hydrochloride acid wash just before plating. Keep it free of oils, even skin oil, wear gloves, to get an even plating.
The black stuff is zinc acetate (Zn(CH3CO2)2 and the bubbles are hydrogen, and I believe what others have said: the Zinc ion solution is attracted to the positive charge (they are negative ions) so the zinc is plating the cathode, not the metal part.Switch the wires.
I think the only way you're going to get a shine or a smooth texture is with a wire wheel or with a brightener of some type. Brighteners are sold by plating companies and can get kinda expensive. The sugar may help a little bit. It slightly helps in copper. May work better with zinc.
how did your plating ultimately turn out? One thing to consider: try plating steel with nickel first :) Good job on perseverance scale! I used to repair AND play mechanical pinball machines in university
No chemist, but I'm guessing the white is zinc oxide, you know the stuff they make the white sunscreen from. Or something else. Definitely one or the other.
YOU - are definitely close to realising your intent - the metal to be plated has to be / needs to be clean eg: cleaned/polished/ground/ brushed back to bare metal.
just get a 24 volt truck battery charger,that works very well even the older weathered paint becomes thin and will dissolve by itself in most places on your part ,rust out your parts with plain water and a rebar bar,your water will get warm to hot, do not add salt or anything you will get gases with it, when you have done that do the same with zinc sheet or plates that you find from old zinc roof gutters
Because it saves you the step of having to dissolve the zinc metal first and you'll have a much more concentrated solution. You can probably find zinc sulphate or acetate relatively cheap on eBay. Probably way to much Epsom salt too, a pinch should be enough if you have very pure water. ;)
Cut both the anode in to two peace's & put live & earth on them & leave in the solution until it turns into electrolyte solution. & use a old laptop charger for your power supply them rectifiers dont work write half the time unless you get a really expensive one once the solution is done then wire the anode & the part you want to plate how you had in the video you are better off with a diy zinc plating kit if you ever do this again love
I wouldn't have added the epsom salt... Magnesium tends not to play nicely with metals other than aluminum & sulphur tends to cause a sort of granularity in metals. It definitely wasn't needed as an electrolyte.
@@RinoaL The title for the story of my life... "It's all just an experiment". Thanks to people like you documenting their experiments, regardless of the outcome, millions of people like me have a vast learning resource. I live on an antique sailboat & have a spare solar panel that's too small to tie into the rest of my system. The best use I can think of is zinc plating. I'm sure somebody figured it out & made a video. It looks like I've got plenty to learn from your other videos though. Liked & subscribed.
you should make videos of your boat, that sounds really cool. ive been following the Tally Ho restoration at sampson boat co a lot. kinda wish i could experience the ocean someday.
@@RinoaL I've thought about making videos, but I spend a lot of time in mangrove forests and waterways of the everglades. Those are both places that are better off with as little contact from normal people as possible. Manitees, dolphins, and sawfish are all a draw for tourists. I'd rather not bring any attention to where they are at any given time. It's not that I don't want people to see threatened species in their natural habitat, but those people aren't going spend 2 days traveling by boat to keep their wake small enough to avoid disturbing alligator nests & they're not going to run their motor shallow enough to avoid slicing into a manitee.
Pickling vinegar is 7% but I think if you freeze vinegar that you can scoop out the ice and concentrate the acetic acid. It would be interest to find out.
My Apologies. I simply jest. Wierd humor I assume you believe. I've been a an avid viewer of both of your channels. My apologies if you take this in bad taste. I wish you all the best.
I have a project coming up to clean up some engine parts and was thinking about using this method: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MG3i-2aruNM.html
Rinoa Super-Genius I was amazed at how quickly that method works. I wanted to use it to restore the engine parts and find a way to electroplate them afterwards. That’s what attracted me to this video.
Nickel was the element added to steel to make it projectile-resistant in the ballistic-armor found on tanks and ships during WWII, and yet you thought it would be soft like lead? I have to wonder why... It's been a known-quantity for 70 years now. Even modern day armored plating has nickel in it, although most of them are composites of nickel steel, Depleted Uranium and ceramics these days.
@@RinoaL Funny how this guy felt the need to make sure you knew he unsubscribed because of your political preference. As though one random nutcase choosing to not support your RU-vid channel is going to have an effect on your life that causes you to become a leftist. He unsubscribed... He didn't give you a lobotomy.
Aside from the written aspect, I was expecting your presentation on the subject matter to be more substantive than the half-assed come-as-you go trial and error approach which lead to a dead end and abrupt ending. An obvious waste of time.
Awesome response Rinoa. I take my hat off to your efforts and lessons learnt. At least you had the "balls" to publically make a mistake and learn from it (thanks to other positive contributors) - No-one ever knows everything...
@@RinoaL I guess, I mean, you are a pretty girl, but this kind of things make you interesting for guys like me, searching the internet for "boys stuff" then finding a lady doing it. :*
Electrons go from the negative plate ( electrons have negative charge ) to the positive plate. So if you want to electroplate something, you connect the source material to the NEGATIVE plate and the destination piece to the POSITIVE plate. So, when electrons go from the negative plate to the positive plate, material will be deposited to the piece connected to the positive plate. Simple physics. That's why your plating did not work.
Q: two pieces of metal, very nearly touching. Electroplate both until the gap between them is gone. Metal bits now joined. Would this be soldering, brazing or welding?
tom cat - you are right about the electrons flowing from negative to positive, however, as those negative electrons flow from negative to positive, positive current flows from positive to negative. The current is what transports the metal ions to the negative terminal which is why you put the part on the negative terminal. The electrons don't carry ion flow but the current does. I know it is confusing to find out that current flows in the opposite direction of the electrons but it is true and so there are two flows, electron flow and current flow. And they go in the opposite directions.
