Electroless nickel plating at home

[santacruzstefan]

Anyone ever do this? I see you can buy various kits, and it seems to me that it wouldn't be very difficult. Maybe do some nickel boron with a heat treatment, or nickel teflon (Fail Zero and NP3, respectively). Of course, UCT and Robar might have some special additives that make their processes unique, but then again they might not, and just have fancy names to get away with charging ridiculous amounts for what shouldn't be a very expensive process.

You think I could make a business out of this? "I'll coat your **** for cheap!" can be my slogan More importantly, if you have done this stuff, how challenging is it? I've got a small kiln I can use for heat treating, and I've taken some chemistry courses so I can handle that aspect of it, I just don't want to buy some of this stuff and fail horribly after investing $500 into it, you know?

[heycorey]

Do some googling ... I think you'll find that the plating industry is highly regulated. Environmentalists hate it. You'd have a hard enough time getting permits for it in an industrial park. There's no way you'd get permits to do that, as a business, in your garage.

[Joewy]

It takes a lot of room to do plating of any type. You need besides the plating tank at least 3 or 4 additional tanks for cleaning and washing with caustic solutions. You are also dealing with hot acids that will deposit that acid all over everything else in the room if you dont have good ventilation. It also smells. If you have close neighbors they will complain.
And the worse thing is that you will have customers who expect perfection that you wont be able to do in your home shop.

[VaderSpade]

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/rh1825lnb.html

[santacruzstefan]

Do some googling ... I think you'll find that the plating industry is highly regulated. Environmentalists hate it. You'd have a hard enough time getting permits for it in an industrial park. There's no way you'd get permits to do that, as a business, in your garage.

It takes a lot of room to do plating of any type. You need besides the plating tank at least 3 or 4 additional tanks for cleaning and washing with caustic solutions. You are also dealing with hot acids that will deposit that acid all over everything else in the room if you dont have good ventilation. It also smells. If you have close neighbors they will complain.
And the worse thing is that you will have customers who expect perfection that you wont be able to do in your home shop.

My father owns a cabinet finishing company, I'm willing to bet his permits would cover this (also, one of his processes is metal coatings, but its an HVLP spray-on type). Plus, I think this method of plating is a bit less involved than regular nickel or chrome plating. And I'm fairly certain perfection is possible at home, it just requires a bit of practice.

I’ve done it. It’s not hard, but it is complicated (if that makes any sense) Lots of steps. I still have all my gear and plan to gold plate some guns at some point. I also have some nickel plating solution so I may try that as well.

Half of these solutions are acid based and half are cyanide based, so you have the makings of a gas chamber. Know what you’re doing!!!

On a side note I have two ounces of Rhodium locked in plating solution. Rhodium hit $10,000.00 an ounce a couple years ago but I couldn’t find anyone that knew how to drop it out of the plating solution, and didn’t trust the refiners to be honest about how much they recovered. http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/rh1825lnb.html If anyone knows how to get it out drop me a line. Rhodium makes Nickel look dull maybe I’ll plate some gun with it?

For gold and silver, you can drop it out of solution with sodium sulfide and salt, respectively. Then you put the precipitate in a kiln, and it burns off to leave behind the metal. Not sure about rhodium particularly, though.

As far as cyanide, I was under the impression the electroless nickel process was a bit different. Yeah, you need to etch the metal with acids, and yeah there were some potentially hazardous chemicals involved, but it didn't sound too difficult.

[SJgunguy24]

Caswell plating would be a good place to start.

[Joewy]

My father owns a cabinet finishing company, I'm willing to bet his permits would cover this (also, one of his processes is metal coatings, but its an HVLP spray-on type). Plus, I think this method of plating is a bit less involved than regular nickel or chrome plating. And I'm fairly certain perfection is possible at home, it just requires a bit of practice.



For gold and silver, you can drop it out of solution with sodium sulfide and salt, respectively. Then you put the precipitate in a kiln, and it burns off to leave behind the metal. Not sure about rhodium particularly, though.

As far as cyanide, I was under the impression the electroless nickel process was a bit different. Yeah, you need to etch the metal with acids, and yeah there were some potentially hazardous chemicals involved, but it didn't sound too difficult.

Have fun. Did it for decades and all I got was trouble and fines.....

[santacruzstefan]

Have fun. Did it for decades and all I got was trouble and fines.....

Fines from who, EPA, state, county? Were you doing the actual electroless finishing? I was under the impression that this process was significantly less involved/ toxic than other forms of metal platings/ coatings. Also, I'm not talking about huge tanks for a large operation, just doing a few pistols here and there, maybe some bolt carrier groups and such.

[santacruzstefan]

Caswell plating would be a good place to start.

Yes exactly, they looked to have the most complete kits from what I saw. Seemed pretty straightforward, but those are some famous last words if I've ever heard em.