Nickel Plating SRB Parts Experiment
I have a new Scorcher start up project on the go (pics to follow). I thought for a change that after bead-blasting all the pot metal parts I'd get them plated in bright nickel. Purely experimental and with no idea how they'd turn out.
Turned out to be a useful experiment with mixed results. The first plating attempt didn't work well at all - in many places the nickel just didn't "stick" to the pot-metal base and left bubbles in the finish. So they were re-bead-blasted ready for a second go.
A spectrometer was used on one of the gear casing parts to see what was in the metal - lots of alu and a trace of zinc, so the idea was to put the parts in an acid bath to remove the zinc element which it was believed was preventing the plating from taking.
Rear gearbox casings and suspension look fantastic.
Mixed results though - turns out this was a really mixed bag of parts from a metal point of view and ended up melting some of the front suspension bits!
Next time, will spectrometer each part individually. But what I've learned is that it would be entirely possible to get some fantastic results....
Turned out to be a useful experiment with mixed results. The first plating attempt didn't work well at all - in many places the nickel just didn't "stick" to the pot-metal base and left bubbles in the finish. So they were re-bead-blasted ready for a second go.
A spectrometer was used on one of the gear casing parts to see what was in the metal - lots of alu and a trace of zinc, so the idea was to put the parts in an acid bath to remove the zinc element which it was believed was preventing the plating from taking.
Rear gearbox casings and suspension look fantastic.
Mixed results though - turns out this was a really mixed bag of parts from a metal point of view and ended up melting some of the front suspension bits!
Next time, will spectrometer each part individually. But what I've learned is that it would be entirely possible to get some fantastic results....
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