First trial with electroplating.

Electroplating is the process of having metal ions attach to an object acting as an anode on a current. The metal ions will form a small layer on the object making it appear metallic. In this post I'll be writing about my first experiment trying two methods of creating Copper Acetate compound / hydrate.

🚨 Potentially dangerous

This process uses acids. Don't do this without proper precaution and Personal Protective Equipment.
This is NOT a tutorial, but just an experience.

Goal & Challenges

For these experiments - more to follow - the goal is to electroplate a resin printed Transformers autobots and decepticon logo and a resin printed Steelix.

Getting to electroplate requires a solution of metal salts and the ability to use the subjected object as anode; i.e. it must conduct. Resin does not conduct. The idea is to create a conductive paint to cover the subjects with. Specifically, combining acrylic paint with graphite powder. (No success yet, N=1).

These experiments will be focussing on copper plating the subject. In our very in-depth cough prelimenary orientative research, we've found that copper is probably the less toxic and dangerous way to get started.

Creating copper acetate

My roommate and I found two methods of creating copper acetate. Both use vinegar, but the first process uses vinegar, copper and electrolysis to create the copper acetate solution, while the second process uses copper, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide and NO electrolysis.

H2O2

A beaker was put on top of a heat-stirrer at 40 Cel at 400rpm. 200ml white vinegar and 220ml 3% hydrogen peroxide was added. Following 2 pieces of 3cm of 99% copper plumbing was added. Lastly a larger beaker was put upside-down around the other beaker to partially contain (mostly vinegar) fumes.

immediately the acid solution started reacting with the copper tubing, turning the solution blue, green, brown, black in the span of a few minutes. Shit.

I decided to let it cool down, and after 10 minutes - due to a slight case of not knowing what the fck is going on - I diluted the solution with demiwater which slowed the reaction.

Notably, the solution is... well a solution, it's clear and there's no precipitation. It might be extremely concentrated (doubt it), impurites might have been there (process #2 worked better though) or other compounds have formed.

a heat-stir plate with a 500mL beaker containg an -odly nice- green color solution

Let's leave that aside while we try to the other method.

Electrolysis

Couldn't be easier. Cut the copper in two parts of 3cm, add aligator clips connected to a bench power supply, add white vinegar, turn on power supply, ....., win? Eh almost, we got 8mA at 2V. We added some baking soda as replacement to salt, due to the chloride, but realised instantly that baking soda and vinegar neutralises. However, probably due to some impurities, the solution started conducting better.

And that's pretty much it. After just a few minutes a faint blue-ish cyan beautiful hue appeared on the bottom of the beaker.

That's it. The power supply was at around 5V putting around 100mA through it, which eventually got up to 200mA.

A small 250mL beaker with two copper tubes acting as anode and cathode showing bubbles and a faint blue hue in the solution

Premature conclusion

After having the nice blue copper acetate solution, we tried replacing the anode with one of the prints painted over with homebrew acrylic graphite paint. Literally only the little piece of wire attached to the print had copper spikes on it. So next time we'll have to fix a better and more conducting paint material.

Here are the final potions of oof:

Two 125mL erlenmeyers with the blue copper acetate solution and a sticker with a skull saying in dutch "Posion: Copper Acetate"

See you next time :)

Sources

Mainly these two:

and some here and there.