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New Plating Setup Does the Job in Minutes

A project log for Joule Heating Actuated Artificial Muscles

Using nickel plated nylon covered in hydrophilic graphene oxide it should be possible to finally make these work as intended.

mechanicusMECHANICUS 05/07/2016 at 03:130 Comments

You can see the copper creeping around the coil, it is the white colored stuff over the black.

This setup takes about 20 minutes to completely plate a muscle, whereas it took days before.

The electrolyte is copper sulfate and h2so4 with a copper pipe that the muscles are wrapped around to stretch them out allowing plating between coils. The copper pipe goes to the negative terminal.

The positive terminal is just some copper foil.

The 8-track player box was repurposed to house my 3d printed stir plate contraption thingy.

A stir bar was made using a piece of ptfe tubing a neodymium magnet and some silicone.

The voltage reads zero for some reason but current set to 100 mA and voltage set to .9 volts before hooking it up works the best.

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