From: cclist at
sydex.com
On 13 Apr 2010 at 10:28, dwight elvey wrote:
Plating is a little bit science and a lot of
knowledge. Most of
us have bench supplies that could be used for plating. What
we need is some of the know-how to get something working.
What materials would I need? What current rate for specific
area is practical? What do I paint in the holes to get the plating
started? Dwight
Commercial houses use a witches' brew of stannous chloride, followed
by palladium, followed by electroless copper to get plated vias.
Probably more than you'd want for casual use.
Multicore used to offer a "Copperset" system; basically fine solder
that's been copper-plated. Stick in into a via, flare the ends and
heat to firmly solder. I've been toying with plating some solder and
trying this. I think the Copperset system went defunct because of
RoHS issues (Multicore is a UK company).
Pulsar still offers copper rivets and there's discussion in their
tech support forum about using winshield defogger repair ink to make
"plated through, sort of" vias.
--Chuck
Hi
Rivets are usually to wide to use on IC pins with traces between.
I wonder if a little of that window stuff would be a good substrait
for plating. Another though would be to use an electroless silver
plate first and the copper.
One doesn't have to do exactly what the shops do.
Dwight
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