I have done a little bit of reading about electroplating and wanted to have a go to see the results I could achieve at home and to get an understanding of the process prior to a meeting later in the week with a professor at Leeds who is experienced in this. I started by plasma cutting letters out of mild steel.
These were cleaned of grease and milL scale before the process. In the future I will don’t a better job of the grinding as I felt that a smoother finish would help.
I made two electrolytes of copper and nickle using vinegar and salt as the fluid and old phone e waste phone chargers as the power source. I’m already loving the visuals of this experiment.
To suspend the letters on the solution we used copper wire stripped from e waste collected at the round table event.
The process worked quite well . First I did a nickle layer and then the copper but i greedily left the letters hanging in the solution all night imagining a thicker layer of copper would build up. However it seemed to impact the process and made lumps rather a thin even layer and all the copper my came off.
The last images shows the letters re electroplated very quickly after the lumps were removed. Basically I have a very basic set up and need some help! However I love the look of the letters with their e waste wires still attached and could make my own cathodes by casting e waste copper in to ingots .
All in all an exciting test!
