Nickel plating coin door parts

Patrick Verner

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I've never done this before. This is what I have going right now.

PET container with white vinegar and a small amount of salt. 2 nickel strips I bought off amazon. The power supply is set to 7v @ 1 amp. It's bubbling pretty good. I'm running this for an hour to make the nickel electrolyte solution.

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For electroplating, you need the solution, and you need a donor and acceptor.

The donor will be nickel. The acceptor will be whatever you are trying to electroplate.

Make sure you clean ALL oils (even lipids from your hands) on the metal to be plated. I have seen fingerprints in plating and handprints in the metal because it wasn't stripped clean. Acetone works well to remove these, then handle with dustless gloves.
 
As time goes by the solution is getting more concentrated/conductive and it keeps jumping over 1 amp and shutting off the power supply. I now have it set to 5 volts and it stabilized. I guess that's why everybody uses cell phone chargers.
 
I saw a bunch of youtube videos on this a while back and want to try it desperately! I have some coin entry slots for Midway coin doors that could use it...
 
The solution looks good. It turned out to be a light green like it's supposed to be. I soaked the part for 1 minute in 50/50 Hydrochloric acid and water. Always add the acid to water. Not the other way around, that is super dangerous. Hopefully that cleaned the part and etched the surface. It is sand blasted too. I rinsed it in water and dangled it from a copper wire in the solution. The - is on the part (cathode) and the + is on the anode. I'm going to let this run for about a 1/2 hour and rotate it 180 degrees and let it run for another 1/2 hour.

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years ago i bought out a small pcb assembly company and i got a few gallons of nickel plating solution. i have been wanting to do something with them for a long time. i am no expert in this area but i belive the copper wire will mess with your finish. instead you would be making cupronickel which is an alloy of copper and nickel (both solutions are green) also if you intend to plate nickel you would likely have better results plating copper first then nickel .

edit: well copper solution is blue but it would hide easy in a green solution
 
years ago i bought out a small pcb assembly company and i got a few gallons of nickel plating solution. i have been wanting to do something with them for a long time. i am no expert in this area but i belive the copper wire will mess with your finish. instead you would be making cupronickel which is an alloy of copper and nickel (both solutions are green) also if you intend to plate nickel you would likely have better results plating copper first then nickel .

edit: well copper solution is blue but it would hide easy in a green solution
You are probably right. I'll play around with the internal parts and get a good finish on those before I try the coin return buttons.
 
The one on the left is plated and the other is just blasted. These were covered with rust and where held together with zip ties because the spot welds failed. This is an older style pacman door.

1000002446.jpg
 
years ago i bought out a small pcb assembly company and i got a few gallons of nickel plating solution. i have been wanting to do something with them for a long time. i am no expert in this area but i belive the copper wire will mess with your finish. instead you would be making cupronickel which is an alloy of copper and nickel (both solutions are green) also if you intend to plate nickel you would likely have better results plating copper first then nickel .

edit: well copper solution is blue but it would hide easy in a green solution
OK, I did some more reading. Plating with copper first does help with corrosion. The copper wire does not contaminate the nickel solution because it's on the cathode side while plating. I made the solution with two nickel plates. There was no copper involved. I just plated the copper wire holding the part in the end. If the copper contaminated the solution then whatever metal you try to plate will do the same.
 
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