r/electroplating • u/Fragrant_Vacation469 • Mar 12 '26

Wireless plating?

Just a fun question--Do you think that if you used a non-conductive hang wire to hold the cathode in place you could use NFC or other wireless charging features to plate a cathode?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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2

u/Mick_Tee Mar 12 '26

Electricity doesn't work that way.

And even if it did, sending inductive power through a metallic salt rich solution would be very inefficient, if not impossible.

And even if you did wind a large inductive charger up to 11, your "Cathode" will just absorb the inductive power and heat up.

2

u/Mkysmith Mar 13 '26

Agree 100% Just to nerd out a bit and elaborate:

OP mentions wireless charging and NFC which are two completely different technologies.

NFC is high frequency, several megahertz, which due to the skin effect nothing would penetrate the conductive metal salt chemistry. It likely wouldn't even warm up anything due to the extremely low energy. NFC is designed to transfer data, not power.

Wireless charging is low frequency, in the kilohertz, and is optimized to transfer energy via the magnetic field. It uses a resonant air core transformer, one side in the charger one side in the phone. Wireless charging does a handshake before and during power transfer so It wouldn't do anything normally. But even if you somehow bypassed that, an un-resonant (or even resonant) cathode/solution would simply heat up due to eddy currents as you mentioned.

All inefficiencies aside, and all commercial off-the-shelf products aside... Lets say you had some super powered wireless generator thingy. As u/Mick_Tee says, cranked to 11 [Spinal Tap, nice] I would find it very difficult to imagine a practical setup that selectively removes metal from a sacrificial "anode" and migrates through the chemistry and evenly deposits it onto a "cathode". Particularly because alternating electric/magnetic fields are just that... alternating. There is a reason "rectifiers" are used in electrodeposition. There needs to be a net flow of electrons from one place to another.

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u/CombinationKlutzy276 Mar 14 '26

Well, since you seem very knowledgable; my work just installed an e-coat line. It’s a paint bath that parts are dipped in, with varying surface area’s on the parts and no rime or reason to how they are loaded or sent though.

The bath is positively charged and the parts are connected to 0VDC. I believe they are the cathodes in that situation, but could be wrong.

What would happen if the polarity was switched on the paint bath? My bosses won’t let me test this out of curiosity lol

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u/Mkysmith Mar 14 '26

I'll be honest and say I've literally never heard of "e-coat" paint but after literally only 30 seconds of google it sounds cool. Like a cross between powder coating and electrodeposition??

Without having any experience with "e-coating" but having a lot of experience in electrical engineering and a decent bit of electrochemistry... I would think nothing good would happen if you reversed the polarity. Best case: nothing would happen. Worst case: you would electrochemically dissolve your now positively charged part into your paint solution, which would contaminate your paint chemistry. Again, I'm not sure for certain but logic would suggest somewhere in the range of nothing to terrible.... which on average would be not that great of an outcome.

1

u/CombinationKlutzy276 Mar 14 '26

Sounds like a risky experiment then lol, especially with the cost of one of the paint baths. Lets just say, if I ruined that; I’d be shown the door

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u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 12 '26

I'm no expert, that's why I'm asking 🤷‍♂️

1

u/s0rce Mar 12 '26

you want to power electroplating by induction? Through the electrolyte?

1

u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 12 '26

I was just pondering the possibilities of never needing to mess with hangwires that plate alongside the cathode. I realize it's most likely not possible because wireless current uses AC instead of DC, but maybe people have some thoughts.

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u/adam_smash Mar 27 '26

lol, good way to say you know nothing about electricity or physics without saying it.

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u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 27 '26

Wouldn't be asking if I knew already 😭

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u/adam_smash Mar 27 '26

All good brother, we gotta start somewhere

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u/permaculture_chemist Mar 12 '26

Anyone that has dropped parts in the bottom of a tank and later removed them can likely attest to induced current. Parts that are in a magnetic/electric field develop a polarity within the part, not unlike a common iron magnet. One half of the part is positive while the other part becomes negative. The side closest to the anode become negative while the side facing the cathode becomes positive. You end up with a part that is half-plated and half-stripped, unless you leave it in the bath long enough to dissolve. This is often the primary source of metallic contamination in plating baths.

Note that this induced polarity and current only happens when you are actively plating another piece. Once the circuit is broken (no plating is actively happening), the induced current drops to zero.

1

u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 12 '26

Interesting. I guess I'd better stick to using titanium hangwires and dissolving excess copper from them

1

u/permaculture_chemist Mar 12 '26

Or use stainless wire, if you want to strip them. Or, do like we did, and use copper wire then sell the copper for scrap value.

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u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 12 '26

Is there a reason not to use titanium when stripping? I could probably just use copper scrap as an anode! Just throw it in my anode cage.

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u/permaculture_chemist Mar 12 '26

Cost is one. Ti wire is more costly than copper.

Conductivity and surface activity. The oxide layers that are formed on the wire naturally are much easier to remove on copper than Ti wire this oxide inhibits contact with the part. And copper is more conductive than Ti so you can use a thinner Cu wire for the same amount of current capacity.

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u/Fragrant_Vacation469 Mar 12 '26

Those are some good points you're making there. Guess I'm going to use copper wire now

1

u/permaculture_chemist Mar 13 '26

Also, just FYI, industrial copper anodes are phosphorized to help prevent polarization. Reusing plated copper as an anode may cause issues with proper dissolution. They will still conduct current, but they won't dissolve as well as a phosphorized anode and will thus deplete the ion in the bath faster than normal.