Hi guys, today we're going to be making this little video. Our Universal Plater
Chrome Edition has gotten very popular and we wanted to kind of just outline
what comes with the kit, what you can expect after you've opened it and laid
everything out. We're going to show you what it comes with and what we recommend
doing as your first plating job. I've got Terry here with me and so he
can interject if there's any comments he wants to make but we're just going to
get right to it and start off. First of all, it comes with the
Universal Plater Chrome console. It's got the chrome stripping ability. You can switch
between chrome stripping and normal plating. This is the mode switch. This is called
the mode switch, power switch and as you see, Pro Series Chrome to Gold
Edition. Okay, now we're going to show it comes with three color coated handles as
you see red, blue, and yellow plug into the red, blue, and yellow. We have the
black common lead which plugs into the black common port. We have a 10 ampere
power supply. We have the anodes or bits as we sometimes call them. Here we have
the eighth inch bit. These are our conversion bits because they convert
from eighth inch to quarter inch. This plugs into the combination handle on this end
and then these larger application sleeves are
what go on to the bigger end. These little guys down here are our medium
fine select plating tips. These are our ultra fine so they do the same thing
just ones a little bit more fine than the other.
That's for pen plating. These are the zip ties. These are the zip ties
that you zip tie on the cotton sleeves on to the bits with.
This little guy here has a little N on it.
That is your nickel conversion bit and that is for use with one's nickel strike
or bright nickel, if you choose to do that.
It comes with four beakers. These are all
outlined on the checklist: Four beakers for the brush solutions, three that you
use, one for an extra and you're fine select beaker when you want to do a fine
select plating with rhodium or gold.
We've got our chemicals back here.
Chrome Stripping solution, which goes with the yellow here. This is your chrome stripping port.
Then you've got your Surface Activator which goes here, or if
you were doing stainless steel the Woods Nickel Strike would also go here instead.
This is your gold port or if you were doing another finish like nickel or
something you would put it here, in this spot.
That's the 24k Brush Gold it comes with a 8 ounce bottle. That's a nice amount of
gold. There are actually two different options, you can get it with an 8 ounce
and no pen gold, or you can get it with 4 ounces and you can get one ounce of pen gold.
Yep, same price. Good point.
We've got the Universal
Plater Chrome Edition user guide it's a very comprehensive, covers everything.
How to set the kit up, instructions from A to Z. It's a great guide. Then here we
have a little handy thing called the Quick Start Guide. This is a one page
paper it walks you through after you've set the kit up, which we're going to do
here in a second, it walks you through A to Z of plating this beautiful wrench
here. So you'll have a gold wrench as your first practice piece. It's strongly
recommended, everybody do that first. Yes, don't skip it, please. The reason we made
this video and also include that is to save you trouble and I promise you
doing this is your first item it will end up getting you familiar with the kit,
save you future problems, and it's just it's just a great first item to plate.
Even if you don't care about having a gold wrench, believe me do it. You've got
your safety data sheets here. One for each solution and see is there anything
that we forgot to mention? That's it. All right. and I didn't really show it
before but this is just an extra beaker for you, for like if you Woods Nickel Strike or something.
Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to go
ahead and set this boy up and then we're going to do the QuickStart guide for you.
Okay so what we're going to show you first is something that's a
bit of a problem for some people, and that's the first time you use these
cotton sleeves they can have a difficult time absorbing the solution which causes
it not to work. So I'm going to show you a little trick to speed up the
absorption on the first time. What I'll do is I like to just put it on there to
open the hole up and then dip it in the water or run it under a faucet, either
way, and then massage it. Really twist it around, you know work it, work it to get
it in there. There's a sizing material that they put on fabric that actually is
what keeps this from absorbing well the first time after you've done this once
and you've used it and everything you'll never need to do this again until you
get out a new sleeve and then just go through this process. It saves you 20-30
minutes. If you were to just dip this in your gold solution and let it sit there,
it could take 30 minutes for it to fully absorb, okay. So once you've done that, now
you got the hole and everything. Get some water down inside of there. You can even
take it and put, if you're using gel, put a little bit of gel on your anode
here by dipping it in the jar and stuff it down in there
and then when you put your zip tie on, you should be ready to go.
Okay, so now that we have soaked the sleeves, the way we just showed you, we've gone
ahead and set up the kit as per the instructions shown on page eight of the
user guide. Just to quickly go over it we plugged the the handles into the
color-coordinated ports there. We've poured the solutions in. We've got
chrome stripping solution here, we've got surface activator solution here, and
we've got the 24k brush gel here.
We've got the common lead which is coming and
clipped to the handy little wrench we've included. The machine is not on yet but
it is plugged in and what we're going to do is I'm actually going to, we're going
to start on number seven of the user guide. Which number one through seven of
the Quick Start Guide, I'm sorry. The one through seven just kind of talks about
setting it up and how to saturate your sleeves and fill the beakers and what not.
So we're just going to start right on number seven and I'm going to talk, Terry
here, through plating this wrench. All right, so go ahead and turn the power
switch on position, so the red light is on.
Okay, set the mode switch to chrome
stripping mode.
Okay, and then adjust the output control knob to seven volts.
Clip the alligator clip, attached to the black lead wire, to the edge of the item being stripped.
Make sure that the sleeve on the yellow handle is completely soaked
with the stripping solution.
Okay, we're ready to go.
Alright, using the yellow left handle and the chrome stripping solution, brush the
item with the solution soaked sleeve using very light pressure: moving in a circular
motion. The solution will become noticeably more yellow
and the color of the item will become slightly more tan as the chrome is removed.
Continue to work over the entire area you want to plate, paying special
attention to little corners and nooks. Spend between 10 to 30 seconds per
square inch of area to completely remove the chrome. Now I'm braking from the
guide a little bit here for sec, to tell you what we're doing is we're going to
show you how to do sections. The reason that's relevant is if you're doing like
a wheel you need to do it in sections. You can't just stripe, activate, and plate
the whole wheel. So what Terry is done here is he's stripped 3/4 of the wrench.
As you can see the tan line comes up there to the end of that top H.
That's all nickel there, that's got that tan color. That's what indicates
that the chrome is being stripped, okay. Now he's going to strip to that point and now rinse.
When you rinse you want to look for any water breaks. And we've
covered this in our other video. You know refer to the plating of the car of one video.
See there's a little one, right there. See that?
Yeah, there's a little water break right there. So what I'm going to do, just hit
it again. That indicates there's probably still a little chrome left so he's going
to go over it a little bit more, because if you just continue with that happening
you're gonna end up getting some cloudiness or a smudge. There's a lot of
different ways to describe it. Pour adhesion. You get pour adhesion, you're
going to have to fix it. So it's best to just stop now and ensure that you get full wetting out.
Oh, right there on the bottom you're still getting a little bit.
Okay, we're going to hit it again. You know, in certain pieces have thicker
chrome and chrome can be thicker in certain areas. Also there can be
something on it that's maybe an oil or something, fingerprints that are
keeping it from stripping too quickly. Or it's possible that there may be
something about the nature of the underlying nickel.
Let's see if this is that case.
Oh look, it finally did wet out. Good. Okay, so
once you get that wetting out. So again, we've stripped three quarters of the wrench
not the whole thing. For the purpose of showing sections.
Now we're going to move on to the activation step.
Set the mode to normal plating mode and the
yellow light will now turn off. The yellow light up there the corner
indicates the chrome scripting. Adjust voltage to seven volts, if it's not
already there. Using the center handle and the surface activator
solution, activate the surface by brushing the entire item with the
solution soaked sleeve, using very light pressure. Move in a circular motion.
Go over the entire surface twice, moving quickly. So on this one you don't want to
dwell on it too long. Just go over everywhere real quick, two times, activate
all the way up to and into the chrome so beyond where you have stripped.
All the exposed nickel is activated. You need to make sure every bit of the exposed
nickel is activated but do it quickly. And then rinse it off.
Okay. Now we're going to do gold plating now.
So adjust the voltage to four volts.
If you're a little off, 4 to 4.5, that's fine.
That's close right there. Pick up the far-right handle of the gold solution
and begin gold plating by brushing the
item with the solution soaked sleeve, with very light pressure. Moving in a circular motion.
As you can see, it should immediately begin turning gold and if
it's not you can turn it up, turn up the voltage a little bit. In fact, crank it up a little bit more.
It'll go on faster. You just got to be careful, if your voltage
is too high and you start to see burning. You either don't have, either your
voltage is too high or you're not moving quickly enough. That's why you want to do
circular motions. I'm going to go about half way. And see here's what we were
talking about before, see how we stripped up to above the H and activated all the way
up there. But we're only going to gold plate half of the wrench. Like probably up
to the B in Pittsburgh there. and then that way you're positive that everywhere
you're plating with gold has been stripped and activated.
See cause if you push it right up to the edge of where you've stripped, you risk trying to put
gold on to an area that hasn't been properly prepared and then you get a
line, you get all sorts of issues. So it's best to leave that buffer zone, is what I
like to call it. You have that buffer zone keeping you from plating an area
that's not prepared properly. Okay I put on what would be normally a good
decorative coat. Like if that were an emblem on a car, that's about how much I
would put on.
Probably 10 to 20 millionth of an inch. Which is a normal decorative plate.
So now what we're going to do is we're going to do the other half of the wrench. We're not going
to do the other side because you'll get the point from assuming this side but
we're going to show you how you blend these two halves together and show you
that there's no line or anything, if you do it correctly. Now so we're going to go
through it again. You want to set the kit back to chrome stripping mode.
Voltage back to 7 volts.
And go ahead and chrome strip. Now the chrome stripper will not hurt the gold.
It's not going to affect it whatsoever.
And so you want to chrome strip into the gold a little bit. Once again giving yourself no
chance of having that area where there is still chrome. Cause if you push it to the
edge, again, you'll get a line, you'll get a problem and you'll be able to see it.
So yeah, over do it, cross the line into the gold and don't worry about it hurting it.
Okay I'm going to take plenty of time make sure I get down on the
bottom of the letters. If it were an emblem, make sure I got in the little corners.
You really can't go wrong stripping too long.
Under stripping is a problem. Over stripping is okay.
And all the years I've done technical support,
the single biggest problem with gold plating chrome items is failure to
remove all the chrome and then trying to gold plate.
Okay we're wetting out good. Looks good. we'll switch the mode back to normal
plating mode again. If you forgot to flip that switch and went on
to activation it actually just wouldn't work. We have a protection in there to
where you can't do the reverse polarity of chrome stripping with the activator.
So it just won't work.
So just, just make sure you flip it to normal plating.
Otherwise, you're going to be like, why is it not working.
Luckily it won't ruin it. Which is what would happen if we didn't have that protection in
there and you happened to try and activate with reverse polarity.
So he's gone and activated, once again, all the way into the gold. The activator will not hurt the gold.
Turn the voltage down to 4.5 to 5 volts. Anywhere between.
It'll plate anywhere between 3.5 and 5.5. But really like 4.5 to 5 is a sweet spot.
While you're plating, you'll see it drops down to, by about a volt.
That's good. That's perfectly normal.
And look at that just quickly turns gold.
That's the reason a lot of people like gel to, is it doesn't drip. You know, you can control
it better than the liquid.
Some situations, a liquid better. Some
situations, gel is better. For doing cars and stuff like that, i'd say 99% of people use the gel.
Well the way we did that there will be no line between
the two different halves and that's when people do grills on cars or long trim
on cars that's something that if you don't do it quite right you can get
a line. Or wheels, any big area. When you're doing
sections like on a big wheel, start small and work your way up. Don't start with a
foot square area. Start with a four inch square area. Get it looking good
and then you know then try a little bit bigger and as you get better you can move up and up.
So let's take a look at how it turned out. Look at that, looks
beautiful. There's no drying or curing time needed.
It's immediately ready to go. The gold does slightly change color over about
the next 10 minutes. I don't quite understand what that is.
Something with the cobalt or something.
That's it.
It's ready to handle, ready to use.
So thank you for watching.
That's about it for today unless Terry's got something more to say.
No that's perfect. Alright, thanks guys.