Copper Plating

[unfy]

Final-ish clothespin design.

Two clothespins attached to each other.

One clothespin grabs the lead bullet via plastic extension and staple grabber.

A size 4-40 screw, nut, washer holds the plastic to the clothespin. The wire is also wrapped around this just to keep it in place.  Has to be tight enough to hold plastic in place yet not split it.

Wire is wrapped and soldered to the staple grabbers.

Second clothespin is attached via an 8-32 bolt, nut, washer.  Chosen simply because that's what I have spare of.

Wire from both plastic-staple leads is crimped between 8-32 washer and nut.

Head of 8-32 bolt inside the mouth of the secondary clothespin is what provides the electronic contact to the rail above the solution.  The drill bit in the picture simulates this.

 

[unfy]

Over the course of the night and morning, assembly lined the clothespin clippy production while doing other stuff.

Going to bed, after i wake, i have one last step to do to each of them (attack the copper wire and solder it).  that'll be 25 clippies plus prototypes made.   will be time to cast some lead, rough it up, and plate a batch of 25 with before/after weight checking etc.

should prolly have used slightly different bolts/nuts for the copper rod grabbing thing, that required some wood filing due to larger size (doh).  Used 8-32 (tis what i had handy), 6-32 or 4-40 woulda been better.

Picked up a couple things for possibly making lead roughing up easier, dunno if I'll fiddle with it immediately or after the batch of 25.


edit:

separate staples.  a cheap staple gun woulda made this faster heheheh.

assembly line:
* using a template, mark plastic forks for cutting of heads, notching, and hole drilling
* cut off all the heads
* drill all the holes in plastic
* notch all the staple groves, i used a file.
* form staples into notches and for bullet holding
* disassemble 25 clothespins
* drill holes through mouth pieces to attach to plastic (not using a drill press, so easier to do single than while still assembled)
* using a template, mark 25 clothespin sides for drilling for attachment to second clothespin
* drill those 25 holes
* since i was using larger nuts/bolts, also file the area around the above 25 holes just a bit so the clothespin operates better
* larger nuts / bolts -> also file the opposite halves a lil for nut clearance
* disassemble 25 more clothespins, keeping it separated
* drill the hole into the mouth of each of them for rod grabby & attaching to original clothespin
* larger nuts/bolts, file the mouths with the new holes
* attach plastic extensions with staples to 25 of the original clothespins without the second hole
* attach second clothespin halves to the double holed clothespin halves
* now it's time to mate the two sets of plastic-extended clothes pinstogether
* just hold an already-plastic-attached halve to a double-halved one, and pick out a matching length plastic-with-staple unused piece to match in length so staples will grab evenly (even though from template, there will be slight variances).
* attach matching plastic piece to the double-halve piece
* attach the last half of the pipe-grabby clothespin.
* wrap wire around staples and thread to the rod-grabby nut and screw/clamp into place
* solder staple / wire connection.  may not be required, but just in case.

The holes should be as uniform in distant from the near edge of the fork as possible.  The notches should be parallel and equidistant from the hole.  If using a template, this be the case. The notch depth isn't too important... that is, fairly deep notches didn't seem to hinder anything.

Some of my plastic staples are a bit loose on the plastic, they rattle ever so slightly.... in all honestly, it doesn't seem critical that they're absolutely firm in place... just so long as they don't wiggle more than 15-20 degrees probably.  I used a single pair of decent needle nose pliers for the job.  Broke 3 staples i think.  You'll wanna attach the staples so the plastic side facing the wood always the same (top/bottom of the fork?)... just so it's consistent with the rounded molding of the plastic.  One side seems to usually fit the wood better in the few brands i tried.

[unfy]

Cast some bullets, roughed them up with steel wool, weigned them, got them in the plating now.

Had a couple hangers break on me... one was a staple, another was plastic fork.  Meh.

Voltage through the solution appears to be low, only 0.3-0.4v.  Kinda weird.

A preliminary check at 10min shows that a few will probably not plate.  unsure why atm.

[unfy]

3 hours, 25 bullets, 1.0-2.5 grains added to bullets.  not nearly enough.  1 did fail to plate, dunno why.

left a solitary bullet in for another 25min, it added another grain of copper.

An approximation would be wanting to add 5 to 7 grains of copper to the bullets (looking at how these plated and how the extra grain looks).

I did a lot more reading, it looks like a sulfuric acid semi-based bath is easy enough to do and outside of acid handling and tank setup doesn't require any more stuffs.  Just gotta substitute some of the water in the solution for battery acid.

Still not interested in fiddling with the acid.  If i had a garage i would heh.

There's a lot that can be optimized about tank lay out now that I've seen real world stuffs to compare with the documentation you can read. 

Tomorrow i'll attempt 25 more without my variable dc thing in the middle and just the full 13v-3A.

This will probably fail and I'll have to call this project closed due to not wanting to handle the seemingly necessary acids within the house (have pets).

The clippies ? EXTREMELY successful.  Soooo much easier to work with. Dunno how they'd stand up to sulfric acid tho heh.

Next project after this will be either the case feeder or bullet swaging.


Edit

Actually, gonna go ahead and attempt to rearrange my plating tub a bit before giving it one last go. gonna aim for proper anode and agitation placement.

[unfy]

Went ahead and grabbed some battery acid from Auto Zone.  $4 for a quart.  This should be ~35% sulfric acid, which makes the plating better.  Cheap, and if I decide to not to use it I can either do something else with it or neutralize it (or possibly sell it ?).

For the most correct copper plating solution given 2 gallons of water, i should need about 3 quarts of the stuff rather than just one... but.... I'm already uncomfy with using it as is.

I'll get my tub rearranged how I want it concerning multiple anodes and hopefully the bubbly agitation stuff where it should be... prolly try again.... and if that doesn't work out, debate if to use the acid.

If I do go the acid route:

Gotta pick up a bunch of baking soda to neutralize stuff...

Will have to test a bit of my tub material to make sure the acid doesn't eat it.  Same goes for the air tubing. Assuming it doesn't, it'll then be a matter of letting the tub 'heat up' for a long time, removing the aquarium heater, putting acid in, letting it settle, and then another plating attempt.

Will also need to move my plating setup to a different room with concrete flooring and better ventilation.

If all else failed but the acid plating works... I'll be at a loss for what to do next.  I can't leave the acid bath laying around the house due to pets so I'll prolly have to neutralize it .  Best bet would prolly just wrap things up with a final post concerning the final setup, materials used, estimated costs, as much as i can remember for what i did, and suggestions on improving it (a more professional tank design comes to mind).  Then there's always the option of fishing for someone that has a garage and willing to offer a 4x4 foot area for to continue the experiments in hehehe.

[unfy]

As a side note, when throwing failed copper plated bullets into melting pot, ended up with some neat slag ... and yes, everything was completely melted

[unfy]

Another failed attempt 15 bullets.

I will attempt once more in the next week then call it quits

[unfy]

I will prolly make another tub attempt sometime this coming week.  The 16-18 hour work shifts are really putting a dampener on hobby time .

My next thought is kinda evil / interesting.... and I will undoubtedly attempt at least one bullet this way just because its an itch that MUST BE SCRATCHED.

What if you take a 2" or 3" PVC pipe.  Cut it to about 3 inches in length.  Cap one end.  Line the inside of the pipe with your copper donor plate, fill with copper sulfate, and attempt to plate that way ?

This seems like a much more controlled environment.

At 3 inch pipe, a 1/2 inch bullet gives you  1.25" of solution between the lead and the donor plate, which is very close to the suggested distance.  It's also a guarunteed thing assuming you hang your bullet in the middle.  At 3 inches in length, you got 1.25" or so of copper donor plate above and below the bullet assuming you get hung in the middle of the pipe.  This is also near the suggested stuffs.

Heating the solution ? yeah, can't do that in the individual 'cells' as it were .

Looking at my past plating results, agitation is definitely very important.... not quite sure how to do that in these individualized things just yet.  Set a vibrator tumbler on the table next to it ? hehehehehehehe

For more extravagant attempts... you could possibly run tubes to the bottom or along the top to pump solution through, or air, etc.  But.... yeah, no.  I wanna see 1-10 bullets at a time work first .

[unfy]

Old thread, I know.  Been busy.

I've got the 3 inch pvc pipe, i've got end caps (a dozen or so... will pick up more today) ....

Gonna grab some extra 49 cent wood to make a jig / miter box for cutting the pvc (aint got a band saw, darn apartment living!).

Also going to hit radio shack to pick up a small vibratory dc motor to see how it handles vibrating the pvc + water in side.  Not an ideal solution, but it's a start and easier than other ideas i been debating.  If the lil $2-$4 motor is powerful enough to vibrate 4 "cells" at once, that'd be cool.

Although, running air hoses to each thing wouldn't be terribly difficult, i'm just not a huge fan of trying to figure all that out for getting right amount of air agitation etc.  The desire to avoid more aquarium air pumps or a normal & loud air compressor has something to do with it heh.  We'll see how vibratory does.

Got distilled water, more root killer (the copper sulfate pentahydrate), and some re-sealable gallon jugs for better solution storage. Still have the sulfuric acid, but really don't wanna touch that.

Similarly, still have hydrochloric acid as a possible etchant for lead surface preparation, but really wanna avoid that as well.

Heating the solution I'm just gonna skip for now.

[unfy]

Hit Radio Shack to look at their little vibrating motors that were mentioned online.  The descriptions on line (numbers about size) indicated it was pretty small.. but... actually seeing it is ... wow lol.

Motor + vibratory weight combined was the size of a 223 bullet.

Waaaaayyyy too tiny to be useful to me heh.

I'll keep looking

[rudy]

If you are going to go the individual cell route, then maybe for agitation you could build a giant orbital shaker?  Example of homemade orbital shaker: http://blog.makezine.com/2010/12/06/diy-laboratory-shaker/

I did a little bit of searching and ran across a couple of things that may interest you.  A homemade barrel plater looks like it might solve some of your problems, namely making contact with the bullets and agitating the solution.  Here is an example of a homemade barrel plater with some videos of its operation: http://www.nulltime.com/zincplating/shop_setup/plating_barrel/index.html

Lastly, I did some searching on how other people plate copper on lead.  I ran across a thread on caswell's site.  Caswell sells plating solutions for just about everything and they have a support forum to help people get their stuff to work.  In my research (I am a grad student) I have done some electroplating and have used caswell's gold bath with decent success.  http://forum.caswellplating.com/electroplating-questions/12853-copper-plating-lead-bullets-produces-flaky-finish.html
The discussion has a link to a PDF outlining a plating setup with a tub, agitator, etc.  I think the barrel plater is more elegant, personally.

The only downside to the caswell solution is of course the price and the fact that the solutions are proprietary.  For example, they won't disclose the solution makeup, but disclosed that the gold concentration in the solution I used was 2 pennyweights per US gallon.

Hope this helps, good luck.

[unfy]

Rudy:

OooOooooo..


The orbital shaker as presented seems a bit violent for trying to keep a bullet dangling in place via either the clothespins things I've made, or even hanging by a wire.  Bullet would need to be secured in place via stiff metal.

That said... a more tame version of the shaker might be possible.... I dunno.  It'll require some pondering.  Definitely something to think about .


The barrel plater shown is an interesting approach.  I thought about something like that, but went with the rotating 5gal bucket setup instead.  It's possible that the drum setup caused the CuSO4 solution to become copper depleted within the drum and that there wasn't enough agitation to get a good flow from the copper donor plate.

I can also easily construct the barrel plater described in the video with all of the materials I have on hand.

I'll prolly need to decide between progressing with the 'cell' approach or this other barrel idea.


I've read through the caswell stuff, as well as the forum topic and pdf ya mention .  The caswell tank isn't too different than how my tank was originally (or latter with the clothespins) setup.

The tank with hangers does indeed produce a copper coating, but it's variable from bullet to bullet and the quality is generally lacking.  Distances to anode plate and differences in the amount of agitation per bullet are undoubtedly the cause.

Also, caswell and most other places do indeed make mention of expensive addititives.  Whether it be pickling solutions or brighteners or whatever.  I'm obviously trying to avoid such things .  Sadly, no one discloses what's in brighteners .

Picklers are undoubtedly mostly just H2SO4 or some other similar acid (phosphoric comes to mind).


The barrel angled barrel setup is most interesting as an attempt. I'd need to switch to a smaller tank and construct dangler and other things... but that's all fairly trivial.  I've also already got a decent motor for spinning things...

I love the thought of the barrel approaches due to "just dump the bullets in and go".  There's so much simplicity there.  Sadly, my results were quite lacking.  Undoubtedly due to my barrel design and tank setup.

Individual cells seem to be easy to construct so far (barring agitation concerns atm) ... and seem like the easiest way to get reproducible results that are needed for bullets.  The clothespins things made do make working with individual bullets (as a hanger) easy enough.

Decisions heh.

I'll undoubtedly construct a single cell, then a 4x4 grid of cells and give it a go to see what I think.  There's no reason I can't also fiddle with the angled barrel as well (other than workspace considerations).

Something to ponder with individual cells... a 4x4 grid of cells is a little over a square foot... yielding only 16 bullets.  A 4 foot folding table is typically 4x2, which would be 128 bullets which would be acceptable probably.  Can always set up 4x4 cells and then stack them as well if needed.


Tnx again rudy.

[rudy]

If you do decide to go the individual cell route, I think it would work just fine without agitation.  With no agitation you'd be relying on diffusion as the main source of mass transfer of copper(II) from the bulk of solution to the bullet/electrolyte interface.  Hence, it would probably just take longer to get a similar amount of copper to plate compared to when agitation is employed.

I'm curious to see how it turns out.  Thanks for posting your progress, it is fun to read.

[unfy]

I've gone about starting to make some of the cells.

I shoulda thought about stuff before opening my mouth on cell density per square foot.  The pipe is 3.5" wide.. durrrr...

So can get 3x3 in a square foot with a couple inches of wiggle room.

Anyhoo, since I had four strips of copper already ready... i made four cells bodies.  I have spare copper to make a few more strips (for a total of 6 cells) without having to cut into what's left of the untainted coil of copper roofing flashing.  I'll need to hit ALL of the copper strips with a wire brush on a drill though... heh.

Immediate notes:

3" standard pvc pipe

Cut to around 3.5" in length

PVC primer/cemented one end of each with test cap (33 cents each at hardware store, they're not "for perm plumbing end caps").

pi * d = circumference = 9.43 inches, my copper strips were around 10 inches so they fit in nicely, and were 3 inches in width already (6 inch flashing cut in half long ways).

pics coming later

[00BUCK]

Do you use acid in any of this? I have a container of car battery acid that has only a little bit has been used. I'd donate it to you if you can use it.

[unfy]

I have a quart of H2SO4 from an auto part's store that I've not opened yet.

Trying to avoid acid if I can due to safety concerns.

At $3-$4, it's not that expensive either.

I'd suggest keeping your acid for a while.... if I make this work, detailed plans will go up and I'll prolly offer to sell kits

Just woke up, need coffee and gotta hit hardware store.  Will make the last two cells and go about a plating attempt with just the 6.  If 6 works, then 10, if 10 works, then 20.

100 is the ideal number to get to, 50 preferred, but 20-25 might be an acceptable number depending on how long it takes to plate for casual plinking (100 rounds a week).

Power requirements, revisited, are 12 amps per square foot of surface area.  Each bullet is just under a square inch. This gets me 12 bullets per amp of power I provide.  I might be able to hit 25 - 35 bullets with what I got, I dunno.

[00BUCK]

I doubt i would ever do my own plating. If you find that you might use this let me know. I have no need for it but just can't bring myself to dispose of it.

[skydve76]

How does barrys do it?  I was thinking they started with melted copper..

[unfy]

Berries undoubtedly uses a huge commercial rotating drum where the anode (source) is within the drum... instead of the other way around.

They also undoubtedly use neato chemicals i'm not gonna come within 5280 feet of (stuff like arsenic is common in plating)... as well as aforementioned acids and stuff.


buck: awwwww... buy if it works, it'll be easy and make for cheap plated rounds .


having been sitting with a drill and wire brush for a while polishing the donor plates is ... a bit harsh, particularly when some of the copper i was using was badly oxidized from a year ago (several thousandths of an inch of green crusty ick heh).

one more donor plate to clean up.... and then to eyeball old solution i've got laying around and then to decide if to make fresh or try to recycle.

er... doh.... will only be doing four cells tonight, forgot to cap the two cells cut earlier. oops.

[unfy]

Mixed up some fresh solution.  No acid.

4 cells in a make shift setup... one of them doesn't have a hanger/bullet cause it wasn't plating for some reason... dunno what's up with that, gonna have to figure it out (either the bullet or the hanger i suppose).




It was about 23min of plating... came up with 3 nice bullets:




Wiped down the crud off of the donor plates, should make re-buffing them simple next time around (even a hand brush will prolly do fine).  Looked very much like used toilet paper after an upset stomach...... *cough*.

Next up: 10 or more at once.  It'll be a week or two though.  Want to build some stuff to make it more friendly to work with (ie: get a whole saw attachment, some 1/4 inch plywood, etc).


Also going need to figure out a better way of hooking the donor plates to power.  The small alligator clips aint gonna cut it.  I like being able to take donor plates out and clean them, as well as being able to dump the copper sulfate solution back into an air tight container. There are some copper washers at the hardware store, or maybe just use the larger copper clips... I dunno.  I'll eyeball stuff and ponder.


Something else I wanna ponder... since I'm going ahead with the plywood and stuff... I wonder how hard it would be to build something to make lowering the bullets into the solution all at once with power turned on simpler.

Will be replacing the copper tubing I'm using now with just some generic all thread or aluminum rods or something.  Nice and rigid.  Also, if its something with a flat surface, might make the clothespin clippy things stay in position easier.

If I take, say, some all thread posts going vertical.... and use a couple nuts to position the lowered limit ... place a hook ... errrr.... i'll have to just draw something.  Anyhoo, ya got the 4 posts at the corners, and then hooks at 'raised' position and hooks at 'lowered' position, might not be too hard to just pick it up and move a grate populated with clothespins from up high to submerged position.

Kinda like adjustable shelving.

edit:

Actually a rope and pully system would do just fine.  Here graph paper


While at hardware store, saw a 5-6amp 12v dc power supply for $20. cheap .  Was supposed to be for 'use your 12v car stuff anywhere!' kinda thing.