![]() Next in the pump line is a 1 micron filter, and a pump (designed for highly corrosive environments). The heater is a stainless steel heater (in a PCV housing, I'm going to remove the heater as I don't use it). I also use 'conductive ink' - basically a solution of silver, carbon and graphite powders in a resin base, it is commonly used for though hole plating of circuit boards.Īttached to this I have a heating and filtering system. I generally use jewelry casting wax as a masking material (melts and adheres very well to the copper, and allow one to use a tool to selectively remove wax to control deposition location. The cathodes that I have been plating are ~1.5" x 3" 1/8" copper sheet attached by drilling a hole in the top center of the plate, inserting a piece of wire and twisting to secure, the wire is then held in the cathode holder, making sure that the workpiece is under at least 1" of fluid. The opening of the anode tubes faces away from the cathode. The anode tubes are PVC pipe with 1/3 cut out and replace with a screen. ![]() It is a 12" square x 14" deep with 6 anode tubes 3 on one side 3 on the other filled with phosphorized copper nuggets ~18 lbs, nuggets are roughly 1" diameter. The bath that I've been using is 10% sulfuric acid, 50ppm HCl, with 0.56% Copper Gleam CLX Start-Up (recommended amount) the bath is about 30 liters. I'll just explain what happened and see if anyone has any ideas. Later coated with conductive ink one to which the fuzzy copper formed.Īnyways, on to my bigger question. This figure shows the dendritic growth, and the channel structure that I Is that due to the long plating times? any other suggestion on how to get a thick layer (at least 250 um) that is smooth and uniform? I'm getting what appears to be dendritic growth (roundish lumps about 2 mm or smaller in diameter, after plating parts at about 20 ASF for ~15-20 hrs. I've been using it for about 250 hours thus far and it was working well, not perfectly īut that, I think, has more to do with the fact that I'm trying to electro-form without using a pulse power supply. I've been using my bath for about 3 weeks now and it had a very sudden unexplainable change in performance. I'm a grad student at the Missouri University, I'm using an acid copper electroplating bath in an attempt to electro-form micro channels. Plating, anodizing, & finishing Q&As since 1989
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