[vcf-midatlantic] gold fing-ers

[systems_glitch]

You can obtain the plating solution and electroplate everything in one go
if you're able to solder a bond wire across the traces to the edge fingers
at some point. At the board fab, this is usually accomplished with a tab
off the bottom of the edge connector that is routed off later, but I've got
some hobbyist-made S-100 boards where someone soldered a wire across the
traces right above the edge connector and did gold plating in an immersion
bath themselves (unfortunately they didn't know they needed nickel, so the
copper has migrated into the gold!).

It's been my experience that, long-term, ENIG boards *will* require
cleaning of the edge connectors once the gold plating is worn through. This
is of course a very small sample size (two or three boards) in a prototype
project where the boards were inserted and removed a lot. In that sense,
it's no better than HASL since it requires cleaning. If it's a design you
have Gerber files for, it may be cheaper to just run it at a board house
that actually does selective hard gold plating. I use PCB Cart for the
XT-IDE boards, which is where John Monahan/s100computers.com runs their
production boards. Quality is very good and the hard gold plating holds up
well.

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 9:56 AM, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:

> Wow that's cool. I am assuming this is it
>
> http://www.cohler.com/pro-lcd-pen-plater.html
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 6:23 AM, corey cohen via vcf-midatlantic
> <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
> > There is a company out there that produced a rechargeable gold plating
> pen for about $50 to $75 called the wizard pro.  They also have a cheap
> disposable version that can be had for about $20.  the real cost is the
> plating solution. That can range from $75 and up.
> >
> > I use mine all the time to clean vintage  “solder” slips when I’m fixing
> vintage stuff and to fix worn connector plating.  Trick is to not
> contaminate your solution so it lasts and warm the solution a bit before
> plating.  Otherwise pretty easy.  I even gold plated my 11 year olds Timex
> watch in some spots so it matches the look of my vintage hyperaqualand dive
> watch so we have father and son dive watches.   :-)
> >
> > If you want to try it out let me know I can bring it to one of the
> workshops, just not the next one coming up, I have a lacrosse thing that
> weekend.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Corey
> >
> > corey cohen
> > uǝɥoɔ ʎǝɹoɔ
> >
>