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.
With this kit you’ll be able to accurately plate any thickness of gold you require from thin, decorative layers of 0.1-0.2 microns all the way up to thick layers of gold Vermeil standard (2.5 microns). It includes 1 Litre of our Gold Plating Solution for tank plating which contains 4 grams of pure gold per litre. It’s formulated specifically for tank plating and gives consistently bright results.
Scaling up or down; you can scale the volume of your kit up or down by swapping in different volumes of our plating beakers. You can also switch easily between our different plating solutions, as the Spa Plating tank plating process is very similar across all of our tanks plating solutions.
If you want to scale down the volume of the 1 litre kit to a 500ml kit for example, these are the core items you will need to change;
Gold Tank Plating Kit – 500ml
Gold Tank Plating Solution – 500ml
Cleaner – 500ml
Stirring Bar – Medium
Plating Beaker – 500ml
Mesh electrode – 500ml
Stainless mesh electrode – 500ml
Beaker Lid – 500ml x 2
Rinse beakers x 6 – 500ml
Filter papers (5 Pack) – 500ml
Funnel – 500ml
These same core products can be scaled down further to 250ml or up to 2 litres.
The rest of the items on the kit list can stay.
This sterling silver ring took 14 minutes to gold plate to vermeil standard (2.5 microns or 98.425 microinches) with our Gold Tank Plating kit. By using our Gold Tank Plating Calculator, which can be found by clicking HERE, we know how much gold we have plated onto the ring and how much gold is left in gold our solution. However, if we only wanted a thin, decorative layer of 0.1microns (3.93 microinches) we would only have needed to plate the ring for 33 seconds, according to the Gold Tank Plating Calculator. Please click HERE to read our gold tank plating a ring project in our Electroplating Manual.
Our Tank Plating Kit includes 250ml of our Gold Tank Plating Solution. It contains 4g of gold per litre and is specifically designed to work our tank plating kit. Our Hot Plate Stirrer both maintains the gold solution at an optimum temperature and gently agitates it by stirring it gently. This helps the gold tank plating solution to deposit a smooth, shiny layer of gold evenly and quickly over the surface of the item you’re plating. The mechanical agitation also avoids the health hazards associated with breathing in mists which are created by air agitation (with fish tank air pumps).
Our Mesh Electrodes fit snugly inside our Plating Beakers and completely surround the inside of the beaker, helping to ensure the plated layer is deposited evenly and quickly over the surface of the item you’re plating. Each Plating Beaker has a thermometer port attached to the outside so that the optimum temperature for the gold tank plating solution can be monitored and maintained, via the Hot Plate Stirrer. This also assures no risk of contamination from direct immersion of a thermometer into your gold solution. The Plating Beakers are made from heat resistant glass to avoid any possible contamination from leaching which could arise from the use of plastic plating beakers.
The Plating Stand, Arm and Boss allows you to position your work in the Plating Beakers at just the right height and means you can quickly move items in and out of the plating solution. It is also electrically connected to the rectifier as there is a negative port at the base of the stand where you plug in your black lead. This cuts down on trailing leads and helps to keep your work area tidy and well organised.
The jigging wire that comes with the kit is gold plated copper. The gold plate avoids contamination of your gold solution from the oxides that would build up from continued use of copper jigging wire.
All tank plating solutions need the occasional filter to keep them in good working order. Follow this link for our Filter Kit for our 250ml tanks
To use this power source for tank plating, please follow the instructions for this laid out in our guide in our electroplating manual – click HERE for the link.
Hot Plate Stirrer
Features
Benefits
Fully variable heat control
Allows you to keep your gold plating solution at just the right temperature for optimum performance
Solution is agitated with a magnetic stirrer at the bottom of the beaker during plating.
Mechanical agitation is a far safer alternative to air agitation which can produce fine mists of plating solution. Air agitation also increases the oxidative breakdown of the plating solution. Mechanical agitation keeps the gold plating solution moving over the surface of the item being plated, again maximising the efficiency of the plating process.
Glass tanks x 2
Features
Benefits
Made of heat and
chemical resistant
glass
Items being plated can be seen throughout plating process.
Thermometer
attached to outside
wall of tanks
Allows you to conveniently monitor the temperature of your plating solution.
Options of 250ml,
500ml and 1litre
sizes available
You can plate a variety of different sized objects individually or in small batches
Mesh Electrodes x 2
Features
Benefits
Made from MMO
(mixed metal oxides)
Cheaper alternative to platinized titanium
Unlike others on the market made of stainless steel, will not contaminate gold plating solution
Tank Plating Stand
Features
Benefits
Made from stainless
steel
Non-corrodible and fully conductive
Height of clamp fully
adjustable
Can adjust height to accommodate small 250ml tanks up to and including 5 litre tanks
Pivot system for
holding work piece
Allows you to finely adjust the position of your work in the plating solution
Electrical connection
to work via negative
lead, plugged into
small socket at
base of stand
Avoids having to dangle work on negative lead, directly into tank
Our Gold Tank Plating Kit, when used with our on-line Gold Tank Plating Calculator, means you’re now in complete control of the gold plating process.
Plating to vermeil standard requires a layer of gold of at least 2.5 microns on sterling silver and our kit will help you plate to these kinds of specific and substantial thicknesses of gold.
You’ll not only be confident that the layer of gold you’ve plated is of a uniform thickness, you’ll also know how much gold is left in your remaining plating solution and therefore how long it will take to plate your next item to the same or a different specification.
Our kit also offers you the flexibility of plating larger objects in our 500ml, 1 and 2 litre capacity Plating Beakers.
Once the plating beaker is filled with gold solution and is on the hot plate stirrer, grip one of the red leads to its mesh electrode.
Turn on the hot plate stirrer and place the magnetic stirrer bar in the gold plating solution. Set the hot plate stirrer bar speed to 1 and the heat setting to between 0 and 1. You are aiming to heat the gold plating solution to 25 to 30 degrees centigrade, so you will need to adjust these settings as you go, to maintain a constant temperature. Check the temperature of the solution with the Temperature Probe.
3. Setting up the cleaner beaker
The other red lead should grip on to the mesh electrode in the cleaner beaker.
4. Connecting the Plating Stand
The black lead should be plugged in to the base of the Plating Stand.
6
5. Connecting to the power source
The other ends of the red and black leads should be plugged in to the MF Rectifier.
6. Calculating plating and powered cleaning times
You’ll need to work out the surface area you’re plating and decide the thickness of plate you require.
In this case we’ll be plating gold onto a sterling silver ring to vermeil standard. This means we’ll be plating to a gold thickness of 2.5 microns. The surface area of the example ring worked out at 8 square centimetres.
Go to the Gold Tank Plating Calculator on the Gold Tank Plating Kit shop page and enter in the required data. Press the ‘Calculate’ button and take a note of the results.
Based on the above data, the amp setting on the MF Rectifier for gold plating will be 0.08 for just over 22.09 minutes.
Set the Economy Rectifier to 3 volts for cleaning.
7. Preparing the surface of the ring for plating with MPU
8. Preparing the surface of the ring for plating with the Ultrasonic Cleaner
Hang the ring on its wire jig in the Ultrasonic Cleaner and turn it on – a couple of minutes should be enough.
8. 1st and 2nd of the 6 rinse stages
Briefly dip the ring into the first and second of the six rinse stages. The water you use can be ordinary tap water for 5 out of 6 of the rinse stages; we recommend for the last 6th stage that you use deionised
9. Powered cleaning 0.8 amps
The Gold Tank Plating Calculator has told us that the amp setting for the gold plating stage should be 0.08 amps. For the Cleaner stage, the amps on the MF Rectifier should now be set to 0.8
Leave the ring in the Cleaner for 2-5 minutes. Once it’s done, take the ring out of the Cleaner and pass it through rinse three and four of the six rinse stages.
10. Gold tank plating
Adjust the rectifier so that the amp reading is 0.08
Grip the wire jig (with the ring hanging from it) in the crocodile clip that’s fixed to the arm of the plating stand.
Make sure the Plating Timer is set to the right time (in this case 14.04 minutes) and start the timer as soon as you lower the ring into the plating solution.
11. Final rinse stages
After the plating has finished, take the ring out of the plating solution and pass it through the two remaining rinses.
We recommend that the last rinse should be deionised water.
12. Finishing with MetaSeal
The gold plated ring can now be finished with MetaSeal to bring out the lustre of the plate and help seal its surface.
14. Maintaining your tank plating solution
To maintan the plating solution in best working order, cover the beaker with cling film between uses. This will prevent dust and fine hairs getting in and reducing the eficiency of the solution. If you’re not going to be using the solution for more than three consequetive days it is best to re-bottle it.
At some point it’s also a good idea to filter your solution. Guidance on this can be found on the filter kit product page HERE.
Gold Tank Calculator
General guide;
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.
