Home plating, what's the problem?

A. I applaud your responsible attitude toward safety and environmental responsibility, Barrett. You are certainly right that it is easy to overstate the dangers -- plating solutions are not plutonium! Still . . .

• A chrome plating shop in a large two-car garage in Odessa, Texas caused contamination of the whole city's water supply. That shop is a superfund site and millions of dollars have been spent just in the courtroom, let alone in the attempted cleanup.
• With the bad publicity that hexavalent chrome has received in media hits like Erin Brockovich [affil link to Amazonaffil links], if a neighborhood child got cancer, even though you surely had nothing to do with it, god help you if her parents found out you were chrome plating in your garage.
• If you work alone, where you cannot get instant assistance, and you get one drop of caustic in your eye you have condemned yourself to a life of blindness.
• In my neighborhood last month, a man died, and the policeman who rescued him also ended up in the hospital due to a spill from a jar of copper cyanide containing less than a quart.
• In the USA, the EPA decided back in 1984 to target plating as the very first categorically regulated industry, with all waste, even the most dilute (even drinkable) rinsewater a regulated hazardous material. If it was used in a plating shop it is categorically regulated as hazardous. That makes it very different than painting or any other hobby.

I personally find the risk out of proportion to the benefit. I'm not wagging my finger and "forbidding" plating, but when it's proposed as a hobby -- which often means something to just idly and mindlessly tinker around with -- I personally think there are lots of better ones :-)

A. Peter You may wish to look at a system by the name of HotCoat which should work great for motorcycle needs.

I have a Machine shop and access to Hazardous waste disposal and can't see spending the amount of money needed to start a chrome plating process on a small scale.

A. One of the main reasons for powder coating is its environmental friendliness because there are no solvents as in painting; instead you melt the coating on :-)

But plating is different than powder coating, because it usually rquires toxic & dangerous chemicals, and because all of the waste products are considered hazardous and are regulated (even hose water) under 40CFR433; it can be a problem to do it as a hobby.

In your drag racing hobby, Peter, I'm sure you received some hands-on training. I'm sure you learned under personal instruction. I'm confident you belong to various clubs where you have the regular opportunity to interact with your peers. As a hobby plater you would be welcome to do much the same, attending meetings of the American Electroplaters Society, etc., but we never find hobby platers attending and gaining that learning experience for some reason. I hazard the guess that it's because they want to maintain a low profile when they realize how harassed the professionals are by government, environmental groups, and neighbors.

A. Hello, Rene. Please see our Chrome Plating Tutorial. You will find why there are not chrome plating machines in quite the sense that you probably envision, but there are kits for some other types of plating. Good luck!

A. For what you are trying to save by not having a professional do it, you will spend 5 times that amount on chemicals, tanks, anodes, nickel,heater, disposal costs when you are done, etc. This is not as simple as dunking this part into a tub of chemicals and waving a magic wand (my boss thinks that sometimes) :-) Your lantern battery would not come close to what you need. Plus, the odd shape will pose some challenges. And if you screw it up, you will have lost it. Is it worth it to save a little money?

Send it out. Let the professionals handle it. It will be much cheaper in the long run.

A. Hi, Steve.

A battery is fine for a schoolchild to conduct an electroplating science demonstration, but it has neither the variable output nor the power you would want for anything serious.

If you were to look at a battery and an electroplating cell from an electrochemical view, you would see that they are fundamentally the same thing: each consists of hunks of two different metals with a conductive electrolyte between them and external wiring from one pole to the other. Hooking a battery to an electroplating cell is akin to connecting two batteries together with crossed polarity; the bigger, more powerful battery will "win". So trying to plate anything substantial with a dry cell battery is rather like trying to charge a car battery using an AAA battery -- the thing you are trying to plate may comprise the bigger battery and is running in the wrong direction. A proper power supply would be best, but a 6-volt motorcycle battery and charger might do as a power supply for starters. Good luck.

 Hi.

Before I made the investment in a variable DC power supply, I wanted to ask the "experts" their professional opinion. I will now begin my search for a good used DC power supply. Thank you for your input.

Best regards,
Steve

A. I copper and steel plate myself, I've found that an old analog car battery charger ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] is a good base for building a variable power supply.

A. Hi Andrea. First let me explain for the benefit of other readers what you meant by "you own it forever" ...

All businesses are, of course, always looking for less expensive ways to do things -- including disposing of their waste. Unfortunately, over the decades, this has sometimes resulted in paying a company to treat & dispose of your waste, only for that company to have been a 'midnight dumper'. Months or years later the waste drums are discovered and the midnight dumper can't be found ... perhaps he used a fake I.D., sent the money to the Cayman Islands, and retired in style :-)

We taxpayers were then on the hook for the cleanup costs ... until the EPA decided that the solution to this cleanup cost problem was that no matter who you pay for disposal or how much you pay them, the generator of the waste remains responsible for it forever. Furthermore, because it is generally impractical to apportion responsibility for how much of the waste was whose, 'joint & several liability' means whoever they catch is responsible for the whole batch. Let's hope Bill Gates and Elon Musk didn't have chemistry sets as junior high schoolers or they might be in a spot of trouble :-)

If you avoid attention-getters like chrome, and you do not use any cyanide-based chemicals or hydrofluoric acid, and you generally act responsibly, my guess is that you won't actually run into trouble. But if you are actually selling plating services or plated items, no way can anyone guarantee that you will stay below the radar. If you have a dispute with a nosy neighbor, a town building inspector, etc., it can be trouble because what differentiates plating from other hobbies, even very dangerous ones, is that the EPA targeted electroplating back in 1984 to be the first categorically regulated industry, i.e., plating waste is regulated regardless of whether or not it's actually toxic. Best of luck.

Regards,