Okay, today we're going to plate some sample Orthodontic brackets
and using the Jewel Master
we're going to plate them in a hard, 24K Gold using Wood's Nickel Strike as an activator.
And it will be a 3 step process where we begin by electro-cleaning the surface, which cleans
any material and makes the surface hydrophillic and will wet out and then we'll go on to the
Wood's Nickel Strike that we've set up with a bagged Nickel Anode and the final step will
be plating in the 24K Bright Gold solution.
Now, we've got the temperature is right about
100 degrees, which is correct, and so we're gonna begin we'll just drop the part into
the Wood's Nickel Strike first (Electro clean first) or the Electro clean first
and we'll leave that in there for probably 15-20 seconds
just to make sure the parts wet out well.
We'll take it out,
we'll rinse,
just regular rinse water.
And now we're going to go in,
and the voltages and current and everything for these first two pre-treatment steps is automatic.
Now we're going to go into the Wood's Nickel Strike and I'm going to do that
for probably 10-15 seconds also.
What this does is ensures that the adhesion will be good with the gold.
Ok, now we'll rinse and then we'll go into a final distilled water rinse
and then we'll go into our Bright Gold solution.
I need to adjust the voltage up
to about 2.7 volts
and we're going to do it for about 4 minutes.
And the 4 minutes will
give us a good jewelry grade thickness of gold plating,it should be sufficient
for the durability.
Ok, the plating has been going on for about 2 minutes and I'm just going
to agitate it, move the part around a little bit, make sure the fresh solution is down
in all the nooks and crannies and actually I'm going to pick the part up, take a quick
look at it and turn it around just to expose the other side to the anode. Then we'll let
it run for another couple minutes.
Okay, now the plating has been going on for about 4
minutes and it's important to note here that this should plate about a half a micron, which
is a normal jewelry grade thickness of gold, however if you want it to be thicker for more
durability or longer lasting, you could actually plate twice as long and get twice the thickness.
And the cost would not be that significant on parts this tiny.
So, I don't know if you
can tell or not but the parts plated very well and in racking these parts what I did
was, some of the parts had through holes and so I threaded them onto a fine copper wire
and two of the parts did not have any holes but they did have protruding parts and so
what I did was I tied a loop in the wire, an overhand knot and just looped it around
the part and that way they are attached to the copper wire.
So now that we're done I'll
go ahead and cut the parts off the wire and we'll clean them and dry them and the only
thing remaining will be a 24K gold deposit.