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EASTWOOD - Electroplating System Tin Zinc

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There was a long discussion about this in the Tools Forum.

Caswell plating

I have an Eastwood kit a friend did not use. Have not had the opportunity to try it out. But the above mentioned link seems to be optimistic. Might drop the member a PM to see how the system has held up.
 
Have not tried tin/zinc, but have tried various metals in past years. And the biggest single problem is the size of the bath. It is intuitively correct to assume bigger is better. If you have a tiny part then you can get away with a small bath and get a good uniform coating. There is probably a rule of thumb somewhere about surface area of part vs volume of part vs bath size. Stable temperature and chemical concentration are very key, as well as a stable current supply (the expensive part of the equation). It is a bit of a black art.

Tom Lains
TS8651 & 58107
 
I use the Eastwood kit a lot for plating little bits. It works OK, and is really easy to do. The hardest thing to do is to clean up parts well enough to replate. I have a bead blaster, and use it often, but with crusty old parts it can still be a challenge. With the success I have had with this, I am thinking of trying some of the Caswell systems. I have a question for anyone that has used the "copy cad" system. Is it gold cad, or the silver?
Thanks

Jesse
 
I took all the dirty, rusty parts, plus the nuts and bolts I wanted to have bright zinc plated (silvery colour) to a plating shop which also does MIL spec plating for the aircraft industry and a month later it cost me about $30.00. Why mess around with a kit when there are experts available.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Why mess around with a kit when there are experts available.

[/ QUOTE ]
<font color="red"> Because its FUN and its another toy to play with! </font>
 
I bought the Eastwood system and had poor results. I glass bead blasted the parts and rinsed them with fast evaporating brake cleaner. They still didn't plate evenly. You would need to consider buying a DC power source and ditching the 2-D batteries that are supplied with the kit to have decent results.
 
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