Non-cyanide silver electroforming
Hi
I have seen a few older posts on this subject but none seem to answer my questions:
I'm experimenting with electroforming at the moment and i have had a few good results with copper. I'm now starting to look at silver electroforming.
I see Cooksons sell a silver solution suitable for electroforming but on reading up on the data sheet over at your new boss's site (Heimerle + Meule) I see that it is cyanide based, which is not ideal. (incidentally, I am amused that people wouldn't countanance using cyanide but will happily use sulfide based patina solutions, despite hydrogen sulfide (300-350 ppm) and hydrogen cyanide (100-300 ppm) having almost identical LC50 values!)
So my questions are:
-Does Cooksons sell a non-cyanide silver electroplating solution? If not I'll try some of the specalist groups out there- SPA plating seem to have one.
-Are the non-cyanide silver electroplating solutions suitable for electroforming? I've not been them mentioned in this context when reading up on the subject- only as plating solutions.
-Can you use a fine silver sacrifical anode with the non-cyanide solutions to avoid depletion of the silver from the soution (which I believe is the case with cyanide solutions, but correct me if I am wrong) They often seem to recomment a stainless steel anode.
If I can't get no satisfaction I will try just silver plating my copper electroforms- which is probably the low hassel way of doing things!
Thanks for your help.
Matt