You can purchase this kit as it is or if you wish, you can use it as a guide to put together your own bespoke kit. Click on the items in the list to see detailed product information.
Our Gold Pen Plating Solution contains 12 grams of gold per litre and we have developed this solution in house with our own R&D team.
It is powered by our MultiPlater. This is Spa Plating’s in-house designed and manufactured power source for our pen, brush and tank plating process.
You can buy this kit as it is or if you want, you can use it as a guide to put together your own bespoke kit. Click on the items in the kit list to the right to see detailed product information.
Our customers use this kit to gold plate items such as jewellery, electrical contacts and dental work.
You can use the full range of our pen plating solutions including precious and base metals with this kit – please click HERE to see a full list of our pen plating solutions. These plating solutions are not included in this kit – you would need to add these to your order.
Not suitable for plating on non-conductive surfaces.
For further products related to this gold pen plating kit, please see below in our “Related Products’ section.
This kit is powered by our bespoke MultiPlater. Please click on the blue ‘Video’ tab above to see how to set it up.
This kit includes one of our plating pens. You can easily switch between pen and brush plating by taking out the pen electrode with the included allen key and replacing it with one of our short platinum electrodes. To see how to do this, please watch the video on the ‘Video’ tab on this product page.
This shows you how you can use this kit to selectively gold pen plate. We are plating gold on silver and the MultiPlater is set to 4.5 volts, which is within the volt range of our gold pen plating solution. To see the video demonstrating this, please watch the video on the ‘Video’ tab on this product page.
With this same kit you can also gold brush plate. Here we are gold brush plating a silver bangle with our gold brush plating solution. This kits offers you the flexibility of switching between pen and brush plating with ease. To see the video demonstrating this, please watch the video on the ‘Video’ tab on this product page.
This kit can also be used to plate many other of our pen and brush plating solutions, including different shades/alloys of gold using our coloured gold mixing system. Please click HERE to see our Coloured Gold Mixing Kit which contains everything you need to get started with plating the complete range of coloured golds commonly used in the jewellery industry and related trades.
The plating pen features a removable and exchangeable platinum electrode. This allows you to properly clean your plating pen after use and before storage. It also delivers the flexibility to choose between our range of pen electrodes in silver, copper, nickel and carbon, matching it according to the solution you’re intending to use. This kit includes the platinum electrode kit only.
To clean your Fibre Nib, simply hold it under running water for a minute or so.
Cleanliness apart, whether the surface you’re plating on is matt or shiny is also something to consider. If the surface is matt then your plated layer will also be matt; no amount of pen plating will turn it shiny. So if you want a shiny plated layer you will need to ensure the surface you start out with is shiny.
NB If you want to achieve a vermeil standard layer of plated gold over large areas then you will need to gold tank plate with our Gold Tank Plating Kit.
How to gold brush and pen plate with this kit
This video shows you how to create a water-break free surface ready for successful pen and brush plating;
makes an important contribution to the overall success of the plating process
has been thoroughly tested to ensure it performs its job at the highest level in the overall electroplating process
is either made in-house or has been carefully sourced from our trusted suppliers
These factors ensure consistent, top quality plating results for a fair price.
Key Kit Contents
The MultiPlater is Spa Plating’s in-house made power source. We have designed this unit specifically for our bench top electroplating processes.
1x Plating Pen – Design and manufacture unique to Spa Plating with removable and exchangeable pen and short platinum electrode.
MPU Fine – No need for a separate activation – just give the surface of you work a thorough clean with MPU Fine and start plating Preparing the full range of metal surfaces for plating
Gold Pen Plating Solution 12 grams of gold per litre – concentrated formulation for efficient gold pen plating. Quickly building a hard wearing layer of 24 carat gold for decorative and functional applications. Good for selective gold plating of jewellery and PCBs
Fibre Nib x1, Fine Fibre Nib x1 Specially shaped to fit our pens to improve electrical contact and therefore, functionality. Can be used multiple times – just rinse well in running water when changing to a different plating solution. Rhodium pen plating claws on diamond set rings
You will need to know the approximate surface area of your piece in order to use one of our plating calculators. Spa Plating's online plating calculators will help you plate to a specific thickness and tell you how long and how much money the plating job will cost.
The surface area of items is relatively straightforward to quantify when you're plating regularly shaped items that resemble cubes, spheres and cones. However when you need to plate items that are more irregularly or organically shaped, it's best to try to simplify the shape as much as you can.
Working out the approximate surface area - 'rounding up'.
Generally speaking it is best to ’round up’ when estimating surface area. Slightly overcompensating means that you will be comfortably inside your quality control parameters, rather than coming short and having to re-plate.
We will go through this process, step-by-step, by using these acorn cups for demonstration. They were copper electroformed with our Copper Electroforming Starter Kit.
Breaking the shape down into more simplified shapes.
There are two main parts to this acorn piece – the stalk and the acorn cups.
The acorn stalk is approximately 4cm in length and the circumference is around 5mm. This makes a rectangle of 4cm x 0.5cm, so the surface area of the stalk is 2cm.
There are three acorn cups, so the surface area of the largest can be estimated and then multiplied by three. Basically, the acorn cup is a half sphere with the interior also needing to be plated. So two half spheres make one complete sphere.
The radius of the sphere is 0.7cm and so the surface area of the sphere is approximately 6cm. The formula for the working out the surface of a sphere can be easily found on the internet.
The surface area of the three cups is 6cm x 3cm =18cm squared. Add this to the 2cm squared for the stalk and you end up with 20cm squared.
Surface finish - an important consideration
In this example, the acorn cups have a naturally pronounced texture, which considerably increases the surface area. This needs to be allowed for and so the surface area of 20cm should be multiplied by a factor of 1.5 to take this into account. This gives a final estimation of 30cm squared.
As you can see this is an approximation and it’s always better to over rather than under estimate to ensure a quality finish.
Our plating calculators and their importance in quality control
Once you have worked out the approximate surface area of your work you can enter this figure in to one of our plating calculators. The calculator will ask you to specify the thickness of plate you require and, with the surface area entered and other factors selected (such as the type of swab or nib you’re using), will state the amount of time you’ll need to plate to achieve this required thickness.
Certain small items, for example Swabs, Nibs and Plating Pens can be sent by normal post within the UK
The courier option for UK deliveries is FedEx
Free UK mainland delivery available on orders over £200
International orders usually 3-5 working days.
For all price quotations for deliveries, please add your items to our shopping cart. You will be able to see the shipping costs by clicking on the ‘Calculate shipping’ button in the cart and before checking out.
You can access our MSDS by scanning the QR code which is on our product bottles.
Here is a video to show you how;
Plating Durability
‘Hard’ vs ‘Soft’ gold plating
Q
Hello, can you advise me re durability of plating types. I have a battery pen plater and it’s great for detail on jewellery and I apply to vermeil standard but another jeweller said pen plater plating is not as durable/is softer than tank plating. Can you confirm if this is the case so I know which direction to go with my new kit.
A
Thank you for your enquiry.
The type of plating solutions we sell are hardened but then saying that, they are still quite soft when compared to other metals like copper and brass.
For any given thickness, pen plating is just as durable as tank-plated gold. The important thing is the thickness.Thick deposits can be built up with both pen and brush plating, but it may take a lot longer depending on the surface area and shape of the article you are plating.
It is possible, using our online calculators, to estimate how long it would take to pen plate Vermeil gold (2.5 microns). Once you have established the surface area of your work piece and knowing the thickness (2.5 microns) it is possible to input these into the calculator and get an estimate of time plated.
I have just done this for a ring of surface area 8 square centimetres and the time to pen plate it to Vermeil standard is 95 minutes (just over one and a half hours), while the time to tank plating it is 22 minutes.
So if you’re going for Vermeil-standard work, it may be the best idea to look at out tank/beaker plating kits.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkCookie policy