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Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

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Art student looking to plate copper onto steel

I am currently working on a sculpture that I wish to electroplate. It is hot-rolled steel and I only want to plate a specific section of it. From what I read on this site, I think I can do this with immersion plating using copper sulphate. Is there another process that will work better? Or if the immersion plating is the way to go, how would I go about doing it on a reasonably large scale (the part that I want to plate is 9 ft x 6 in)? Or, ultimately, would I have to take this to a plating shop?

Laura Garcia
Art Student - El Paso, Texas, United States
February 11, 2009

Hi, Laura. An immersion copper deposit will be very thin and it will not have any shine to it at all; rather it will be a raw, salmon-toned deposit.

I think you would be better off looking into brush plating a thin layer of nickel (nickel strike) and following it by copper electroplating with the same brush plating setup.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
February 12, 2009

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