Why are my plated boards coming out rough, like copper plated sandpaper?
Deposit roughness can result from a number of sources. To wit: • Anode type – Phosphorized copper (0.04 – 0.08% phosphorous by assay) sheathed with polypropylene or Dynel bags or packaged in machined Porex tubes is ideal. OFHC copper, copper plumbing pipe, or copper wire is not sufficiently pure to avoid the presence of copper particles in the plating solution. • Anode bags or tubes – check for holes or breaks in the bottom seal by filling with water and allowing to drain. Watch closely to see of water pours out of any one area. • Solution clarity – It is always a good idea to continuously filter a plating bath at the 1 to 5 micron level. If you use your bath infrequently, and are very careful to maintain the chemistry and not allow foreign materials to enter the solution, you can often get by for a while without filtering. Sooner or later, however, you are going to have to provide some means of removing the particulate contamination that inevitably begins to accumulate. • High chlorid
