Clean and Simple Electroplating. In this example of electroplating I will show you how to electroplate nickles, quarters and dimes with the copper from pennies.
Pleases read all the steps before starting. Since I haven't found a nice instructable on electroplating, I am now making one. Warning! This is my first instructable! What you will need:1-1.5 v power source (old batteries preferred)some kind of battery holder with alligator clipssmall, non-conductive, disposable container (plastic or glass, the small yogurt containers are great)a weak acid (vinegar: acetic acid, or lemon/lime juice: citric acid)two or more penniesquarters, nickles and dimes (almost any hardware you want platted)time (at least 1.5 hours...I think, 3 is better)plastic wrap (Saran Wrap) here is all the stuff I used, the 3000 sq ft platic wrap gets a picture of its own.
Copper Plating and Etching Altoids Tins. UPDATE: There's some great information on this page and it's comments, but I've recently published a far more comprehensive article here: Etching Tins with Salt Water and Electricity With this project I wanted to try a number of new things: Magazine pages as cheap toner transfer mediaCopper electroplatingEtching Altoid tins with a salt water solution The copper plating met with mixed success, but the other two methods resulted in some nice pieces.
Note: blue vitriol and muriatic acid are archaic names for copper sulfate and hydrochloric acid. Magazine pages for toner transfer: While looking for information on transferring toner using a fuser assembly from an old laser printer I ran across several websites where people suggested using glossy magazine pages for transferring printed circuit board images to a copper substrate. Preparing the Altoids tins turned out to be harder then I predicted. Steampunk Flat-Panel LCD Mod. The Steampunk Keyboard looked terribly anachronistic sitting in front of my Dell 1907FP flat panel monitor and while I hesitated to tear open a $300 monitor that was still under warrantee, art must be served.
Inside I found that the whole thing was encased in steel sheet. I rejected the idea of re-making all of the pieces in brass and went looking for some paint that would give a nice effect. I settled on a nice gold metallic from Rustoleum with a thin coat of brown Krylon Crystal Color to give it an aged look. Not too bad! The finish is a good match for the 19th Century gas lamp arms that I bought from Sequential Glass. I couldn't find any brass angle for the frame so I bought some brass colored aluminum angle from True Value. Steampunk Keyboard Mod. My goal with this project was to build a retro keyboard that was fully functional and of a sufficient quality that it could be used everyday by a touch typist.
In order to achieve this I chose a high quality (though widely available) keyboard as my starting point. This is an IBM Model M "Clicky" keyboard. They were made starting in the mid 1980's and a version is still manufactured today. This particular keyboard was made in 1989 and shipped with and IBM PowerStation 530, a UNIX box the size of a kegerator. Besides its overall quality and heft, one of the things that makes this keyboard particularly good for such a mod is the fact that it has removable key caps and the under-cap has a flat surface ideal for affixing a new key top. Step one was disassembly and the removal of the skirts on the key caps. Here is a short movie demonstration the process of removing the skirts from the key caps. Next came the process of cutting and shaping the brass. The shapes were then cut out on a band saw. Organization 101: DIY File Crates From Pallets - DIYdiva. A recurring theme here over the last couple of weeks has been watching me desperately trying to dig myself out from under a mountain of unorganized papers, which pretty much describes the regular chaos of my life.
(You can see some of my other attempts to get it under control here and here.) Hello contents of my filing cabinet. Nice to see you heaped into a pile on the floor. I had one more project up my sleeve to help get things organized. I wanted an easy, portable way to file papers that looked good enough to leave out in the open. I was inspired by these wine-crate-esq filing boxes from Ballard Designs, but 1.) First I searched online for some wine crates I could turn into my own file boxes, and then I realized all of the time I was spending on the computer could actually be better spent playing with my power tools. Here’s how… Step 1: The Epic Dismantling of Pallets.
Resiliency of Army Engineers in Baghdad, Iraq 2009-10 - by SawDustKing. The Machine Light Series of Frank Buchwald.