diy zinc plated copper hosts (EDIT: EXPERIMENT FINISHED!! PICS!!)

[Benm]

Re: diy zinc plated copper hosts

Electroplating is often a difficult process in practice. Even if you are depositing the correct material (i.e. metallic zinc) the result can look like a black sludge. It requires formation of sizeable crystals to take the color and other properties of bulk zinc.

Perhaps you can turn the surface layer to brass using heat after depositing the zinc - i'm not sure it will work, but its feasible as a reaction.

As for zinc allergies/poisoning: Its very rare for people to be allergic to zinc. You can get zinc poisoning if you ingest a lot of zinc salts, inhale zinc dust or something like that. They used to make zinc coins in a number of countries, but thats been mostly abandoned because its properties arent attractive for coinage: not wear resistant, and not very pretty due to oxidation either.

 

[benmwv]

Re: diy zinc plated copper hosts

It was actually fairly easy to do, the reason i chose zinc to try and plate with is because it is the easiest metal to plate with.

It looks nice on the pennies, there was a thin layer of black stuff but it was easily taken off with some rubbing alcohol. I suspect it would look better on the host since it would be much easier to polish not having all the words on it.

I went out and bought a card reader so ill post some pics shortly.

EDIT: I have 20 pics coming up.

 

[benmwv]

Re: diy zinc plated copper hosts

Enjoy
EDIT: ok I resized them

The set up:

The copper and the zinc:

1 hour 30 minutes:

1:30 jar 1:

1:30 jar 2:

1:30 jar 3:

2 hour 15 minutes:

3 hour 30 minutes:

Next morning, 14 hours 30 minutes, crystal growth jar 3:

Next morning, 14 hours 30 minutes, crystal growth jar 2:

Next morning, 14 hours 30 minutes (already wiped with alcohol):

Contrasting jar 2(left, polished) against jar 3(right, unpolished):

^^ Love the look of that left penny. ^^


Jar 3, polished:

As you can see it came out very well and on a smooth piece of copper it would look very nice.

 

[Ignis Fatuus]

Re: diy zinc plated copper hosts

As for zinc allergies/poisoning: Its very rare for people to be allergic to zinc. You can get zinc poisoning if you ingest a lot of zinc salts, inhale zinc dust or something like that. They used to make zinc coins in a number of countries, but thats been mostly abandoned because its properties arent attractive for coinage: not wear resistant, and not very pretty due to oxidation either.

I used to get it all the time. I had to grind off the zinc coating on the I beams to be able to weld to them. Welding and zinc do not go well together.

 

[Ignis Fatuus]

Damn, you almost crashed my PC with those giant pix. Please re-size, or use Photobucket.

 

[Benm]

Sure, if you just sand off a layer of zinc and inhale the dust, that would probably be a very bad idea!

Zinc is not prone to contact allergies though, unlike nickel for example. Its quite common for people to get skin irritation when wearing nickel containing jewelry, but with zinc that would be very unlikely.

Ionic zinc is a fairly important nutrient in most organisms, but you can always get too much of those in certain circumstances. The good thing about zinc is that it will not accumulate, and you should recover after only a few days of avoiding exposure.

 

[Bionic-Badger]

Is it actually plated, or has the copper just left the penny, revealing the zinc underneath?

 

[benmwv]

It is actually coated with zinc.

In the 3rd to last picture you can see that in some of the higher spots I sanded it a little too much revealing the copper underneath.