Tin Plating Bus Bars I did electroplate tinning of some busbars and decided it might be of interest to others.

I am not an expert at this…. I was learning as I went…. There are probably things I did wrong, but it all worked out in the end.

This link has the Tinning instructions I tried to follow: http://transistor-man.com/electroplating_busbar.html

Warnings:

• Do this at your own risk. Muriatic acid is nasty stuff. • Wear acid proof gloves!!! • Wear eye protection!!!! • Do this in a very well ventilated area. (Particularly the first part where you are

dissolving the tin in the acid to make the Tin-salts bath. See the instructions in the link

A few key notes: You can't get the copper too clean before you start. From the start I would only hold the copper with nitril gloves so no oil from my skin would get on it. I first shined it up with a wire wheel on my drill. I then washed it in soap and water, and wire-wheeeled it again.

Here is a pic of the electro-plating bath.

It is not obvious in the pic, but the part being tinned is suspended above the bottom of the plastic tub and fully submerged in the tin-salts bath.

The main thing that the instructions did not cover was the best current. For this part I found .3A to .5A seemed to work. For the small cell bus bars I used ~ .2A. If you see bubbles coming from the part, the current is probably too high.

Note that I used copper wire to hold the part in the bath. If I do this again, I would try to find some stainless steel wire.

After a while I would get tin 'whiskers' growing from the part. I would stop the process and wipe the whiskers off with a paper towel every once in a while.

When I thought it was thick enough I would take it out of the bath, rinse it with tap water and then polish it with the wire wheel. If any copper shows through...it went back in the bath for more plating. Once there was no copper showing after the wire wheel, I would plate it one more time and then do a final polish with the wheel.