(Mis)Adventures in Electroplating!

Come with me on a journey into the magical world of electroplating!
Nickel plating, specifically. And the whole learning process I went through.
Using Caswell's Regular Nickel: https://www.caswellplating.com/regular-nickel-crystals-w-brightener-1-5-gal.html
It's worth mentioning that they also sell a whole nickel plating kit, but the crap you get in the kit is worth nowhere NEAR as much money as they're asking for it. Most of the 'accessories' that I use in this video are random junk I had lying around, like the fish tank air pump. I believe I spent less than $40 for all the accessories, including the pure nickel anodes. But I did - later - buy a cheap $40 benchtop power supply, mostly just to make my life easier. In their kit, all they give you is a $5 wall-wort power adapter thing, I have scores of those laying around, but batteries are also cheap if you want to use those. Anyhow, I don't advise buying the kit.

Also, oops! The plating thickness formula is apparently not from Caswell at all, I don't know where I got it! But apparently, for generic nickel plating, it's
T = (12.294 I t)/A
T = Thickness in um (micro-meters)
I = Current in amps
t = time in hours
A = area to be plated in dm^2 (really stupid, why isn't it in cm?)
I'm not at all sure how accurate this is, because the constant could be different with a different plating solution. Here it is solved for time, though, as that seems MUCH more useful to ME:
t = (TA) / (12.294 I)

Видео (Mis)Adventures in Electroplating! канала MadMan Machinations