Another Forum for metal finishing questions and help

Hi Tom,
I disagree with some of the things you say on that forum and on your website (for example, how you talk about people in the industry being secretive). We've responded to that that dozens of times here. But you are welcome to keep saying it here, there, or anywhere if that's what you believe :-)

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Hi again Tom.
You will find the composition of a Watt's Nickel Bath in numerous threads on this site, as well as in virtually all plating books including the free Metal Finishing Guidebook -- the concentrations of nickel sulphate, nickel chloride, boric acid, the recommended pH, operating temperature, filtration, agitation, the suggested current density, anode to cathode ratio, etc.. You'll find how to maintain the surface tension with wetting agents -- to what value, and how to measure it. You'll also find out here and in such books that pretreatment is 75% of everyone's problems.

As for "brighteners/levels/wetters": in ASM's Metals Handbook, Vol. 5, you will find a very thorough explanation of exactly how primary brighteners, secondary brighteners, carriers, wetters, etc., work -- and the generic chemicals you can use for that purpose like formaldelhyde, coumarin, saccharin, etc. But here's the fact that you seem to be rejecting, Tom: modern additives aren't "mixed" from ingredients that you can buy; rather, they are synthesized from precursors; and synthesis of chemicals is beyond what a hobbyist can do. You can't synthesize gasoline or polypropylene from crude oil yourself, and you can't synthesize modern additives from it either. So stick with the formaldelhyde, coumarin, saccharin, etc., or buy the synthesized brighteners -- your choice.

If you asked a surgeon to tell you what thread size he would use for stitches under such and such condition he would probably answer you. But if you asked him how to safely perform a successful appendectomy, he couldn't answer -- the question is just too broad. Similarly, we're delighted to answer specific questions but we simply can't explain every detail of successful robust nickel plating in a paragraph or two.

You are right that no company is going to post on the internet its most closely guarded trade secrets, gained through decades of trial and error, at a cost of millions of dollars -- but not because hobbyists can copy it (they can't), but because their large competitors can. Try getting manufacturing blueprints from Lexus -- it's the same thing. The companies aren't afraid that you'll build a Lexus or synthesize a nickel brightener, but they are concerned that their billion-dollar competitors will.

Do you call your mechanic and ask him how to rebuild carburetors, or your pharmacist and ask her how to make antibiotics? Yet you're offended that you call plating shops and they won't spend their hours telling people how to electroplate? Instead, they make sites like this one possible.

Just like hobby platers, industrial platers were treated "as a bunch of hicks that are dumping their sludge in the neighbors yard and digging around in the baths with their bare hands". But then every plating shop was forced to get wheelbarrows full of permits, and submit to inspections & fines from their sewer authority, the city, the state, EPA, OSHA, etc. We can be reasonably confident that they're not dumping and they are practicing safety because they can't get away with it; the same can't be said for hobby platers. It's pretty reasonable that plating shops say "I don't want you selling people your product without inspections or permits when I'm inspected 3 times a month and need fifty permits" :-)

A. About the tenth time a hobby plater/anodizer calls you and chews you out because you charge too much or you will not give him/her an hour of your time, FREE, you start getting real short, sharp, testy and cranky when one calls.

If you have spent thousands of dollars on books and hundreds of hours troubleshooting failures, Why should you expect me to give it to you for nothing.

All of that said, after I retired, I have helped several home platers and anodizers perfect their processes, All of them thru finishing.com. BUT, I only did this after they had a waste disposal number.