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How can a hobbyist do thru-hole plating of PCBs?

I'm an electronic hobbyist for many years. I always (nearly) make my printed circuit board myself and I'm facing the same problem as many other, how to make plated thru holes ? Some (very rare) hobbyist use the same process as in the industry which involve lot of dangerous and expensive baths. I'm wondering if using cured silver paste in the holes could be used to electroplate copper on it ?

Michel Baguet
hobbyist - Bouffioulx, Belgium
June 10, 2009

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I suppose you might be able to plate through holes by coating them with true silver pigmented lacquer, but for small quantity use, I believe you will find eyelets less expensive and more dependable.

Jeffrey Holmes, CEF
Spartanburg, South Carolina
June 11, 2009

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The chemicals used in PCB production are not particularly dangerous but there are many stages. They are expensive and require close chemical control. Also, they do not like being used occasionally and left idle for long periods.

Silver paste may work but a short wire through the board and soldered both sides is simple and cheap. If you must have a hole, consider hollow rivets soldered in.

Multilayer boards with inter-layer connections requires laminating presses etc and I would not consider it practicable for amateur use.

Geoff Smith
Hampshire, England
June 15, 2009

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Thanks for your answer.
Eyelet, because of their size, can be used in making power PCB when you have wide copper track. In this case,I usually use wire soldered on both side. 90 percent of the PCB I'm making is for digital electronics which involves high track density, 10 mils width and 10 mils apart.
In general, it's silver that is electro-plated on another metal so I was wondering if the reverse could be done.
Do you believe that a simple solution of copper sulphate ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] with some sulfuric acid would be enough to do a excellent copper electro-plating with a thickness of about 40um ?

Mike.

Michel Baguet
- Bouffioulx, Hainaut, Belgium
June 16, 2009

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Acid copper sulphate is not suitable for PCB plating without the use of special organic additives. This is because the basic solution has very limited "throwing power". The result will be very uneven plating thickness on the surface and practically no copper plated down the holes.
It is not practical to try to reproduce the additives yourself. Big research labs have spent years developing and patenting them.

I do not understand the sentence about silver plating. It is not commonly used on PCBs for standard applications.

Geoff Smith
Hampshire, England
July 3, 2009