Nickel sulfamate storage

A. Nickel sulphamate does crystallise out of solution, especially if you are using high concentration electrolytes. In reality this does not matter as long as you keep the bath volume topped up and are careful when you heat the bath up. If there are crystals on the heaters you can run the risk of burning them out because the deposits act as a thermal insulator. The crystals may not be adjust nickel sulphamate, it could be boric acid. Again, that is not a problem as long as care is taken when reheating the bath.

A. Your tank sounds a bit small. Assuming it is a normal pyrex beaker, I reckon it will be equivalent to a 10 liter one. Trying to get a sample 1 ft square in that may be a squeeze. You will get nickel plating, but the thickness distribution will be all over the place. I would be much happier with a greater anode-cathode distance, say 12 inches, then you can get better thickness control all over your article. Regarding the nickel anode; all you need is an approximate equivalent surface area. 10 lbs of nickel rounds is probably over the top! Just fill an anode basket of (one sided) surface area of about a square foot. Remember to use an anode bag to prevent any debris contaminating your bath. As far as mixing S and N nickel, I wouldn't do it. The reason being that the beauty of S nickel is that it dissolves much more uniformly than N nickel. Furthermore, N nickel requires chloride ions to be present to promote polarisation, otherwise it passivates. You can of course add nickel chloride to your sulphamate bath and make it to an equivalent watts nickel, but then you lose all the advantages of a sulphamate bath. Can you not sell the N nickel back to the supplier, or at least do a part exchange?

  The part is a tubular type piece, it fits in ok, I was going to put a electric motor on top to rotate it slowly while plating. So if the tank is on the small side, you will not hurt the bath or ph, it's more about getting a even coat? I mainly do small parts, I am trying to make my set up work for this one piece. Thanks again for your help.