Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
(OP)
I'm looking for an easy (or least complicated) method for plating Titanium and Stainless Steel with Platinum. Everything I've found so far seem to be fairly involved complex methods but surely there must be a fairly down and dirty "backyard" method that would work good enough for what I need.
I'm trying to make some electrodes for use in water electrolysis that won't be consumed in the process. Since Platinum isn't cheap I've had to be resourceful. Hard drive platters turned out to be perfect candidates for experimenting with platinum. They can work great used as they are and plates or for recovering the platinum to use in plating other things. I can get the platinum foil off of the platters easy enough, and have played around with dissolving the foil in nitric acid and get a pretty green solution, but now what? Can I use that solution as the bath for the plating process or is that too easy to work? Also, does the piece I want to plate need to be the cathode or anode and what should I use for the other electrode? Any sugestions?
Thanks!
I'm trying to make some electrodes for use in water electrolysis that won't be consumed in the process. Since Platinum isn't cheap I've had to be resourceful. Hard drive platters turned out to be perfect candidates for experimenting with platinum. They can work great used as they are and plates or for recovering the platinum to use in plating other things. I can get the platinum foil off of the platters easy enough, and have played around with dissolving the foil in nitric acid and get a pretty green solution, but now what? Can I use that solution as the bath for the plating process or is that too easy to work? Also, does the piece I want to plate need to be the cathode or anode and what should I use for the other electrode? Any sugestions?
Thanks!





RE: Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Electroplating/
Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.
www.carbideprocessors.com
Good engineering starts with a Grainger Catalog.
RE: Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
RE: Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
RE: Platinum Plating - Best Method(s)?
Ultimately I'd like to be able to plate some stainless spheres that are .093" in dia. I'd like to see how well a cell would work if you made the electrodes as a mass of spheres instead of the usual plates, rods, screens, or wires you always see being used. You could call it something like a pebble reactor. LOL
There's several different configs I'd like to try out, one being where the there are just the positive and negative electrodes consisting of the spheres, another setup like the one I just described but with a third group of spheres between the electrodes mimicking a neutral plate. Lastly, instead of one bunch of spheres between electrodes, a meticulously layered cell using a single layers of spheres separated by a nonconductive mesh. The first layer on each end of the stack would be electrodes of the same polarity and the opposing electrode would be the single layer at the center of the stack. The idea being that each separated layer between the layers that are used for the cathodes and anode would be the neutral layers.
My theory is that spheres have the best shape for creating electrodes and a cell with just the right design using spheres will make a more efficient electrolyzer than any other type. The reasoning being that spheres maximize surface area and have the ability to create a neatly organized, densely packed masses that remain porous allowing gas bubbles to escape and electrolyte to easily flow through it and have no sharp edges for current to bleed off of. That's my theory anyways.... I just need to figure out how to plate things with platinum using what I have around the house and I know with all the crap I have I can do it, heck I'm already half way there, I just need that last piece of the process... getting the dissolved platinum back onto what I want plated.
I'll have to go check out that link to the Google forum. Thanks for the link!