Well, plating is hard.
I didn't clean the surface enough before betting started, so the first plating job worked but looks crappy. I polished the plating off with my rotary tool so I could try again. The polishing cleaned it up real nice, but I also nicked the painted area so there are some flaws in the second plating picture because of that.
Starting the nickel plate the first time
First try, nickel plate. Ugly
After gold plate, first try
Same order as before.
Then I polished it all off and repeated:
Didn't snap a pic of the nickel plate on rev2, but here's gold rev 2
So not perfect, but way better. If I polish it right from the start, I think we'll get an even better look.
Sure is shiny!
I'm sure I'll be able to get this done at a professional circuit board making company. Their results will look amazing, but it'd cost a bunch to do the custom masks and milling for small batches.
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