Steel Facing Photogravure

April 20, 2011 Steel Facing for Photogravure
In the last few weeks I have been setting up an electroplating tank for steel facing photogravure plates. I have an old plastic vertical tank that I bought at surplus for vertical etching a long time ago. I bought 2 of them and this was the one I never used so it was nice and clean. I drilled holes in the steel and have it hung by steel hooks (sanded welding rod) from brass tubing. I melted some notches into the top of the tank with a soldering iron so the brass tubes stay put. I made a crude steel wire hanger to hang the printing plate, this has since been replaced with copper wire. I could also drill the copper plate in the margins before trimming and hang it with copper s-hooks just like the steel. The tank holds 4 gallons and I found this cheap on e-bay. The rectifier is a Mastech 15 volt 30 A power supply. This is probably more power than I need for the size I can do in this tank but if I ever need to go bigger it will work. Mastech has some new and more affordable 6 amp power supply units out now. The 6 amp would do up to a 200 sq in plate since you need 0.03 amps per square inch of copper. The voltage is set to 6 before setting the amps. My anode and cathode are pretty close, about 3" apart, but from what I understand this is only a problem if the steel anode is smaller than the copper.

Low carbon steel is recommended for steel facing gravures and is very difficult to find in a small quantity. I found this site onlinemetalstore.com aka DiscountSteel.com and was able to get some 1008 (.08% carbon) cold roll steel at 11g thickness and cut to the size I needed. I only needed 12x14" and this only cost me $12.61. I went ahead with some tests and it seems to be working well. The cert confirms that it is actually less than .04% carbon content which is in the ideal range for steel facing. Deli Sacilotto recommends .02-.04 and .08 at the highest. I was really happy to find this affordable low carbon steel.

Steel Facing Service
I can steel face copper plates up to 12 x 14". The steel I use is a super low carbon stee lthat is less than .04% carbon content (1.00% = 1%) which will ensure a very bright plating. The square inch price is $0.40 with a $10 handling fee for every plate after the first and a $40 minimum. Normal cleaning is included. If plates are dirty or heavily oxidized then we will need to charge a cleaning fee.