Circuit Lake

Electronic Project and Circuit Collection

Electroplating Controller

10/10/2010 Category: AVR, Control, Microcontroller, Project

According to Wikipedia, Electroplating is a plating process that uses electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a solution and coat a conductive object with a thin layer of the material, such as a metal. Electroplating is primarily used for depositing a layer of material to bestow a desired property (e.g., abrasion and wear resistance, corrosion protection, lubricity, aesthetic qualities, etc.)

microcontroller based electroplating controller


In this project, Robert Papp built an electroplating controller based on Atmel AVR Butterfly Kit. It control two main physical parameter for an electroplating bath, the temperature and the current flow, by digitally implemented PID algorithms. The PID controller has some other parameters and constants that should be tuned according the process transfer function.

For digitizing the sensors outputs, the project use A/D port of Butterfly Kit. While digital output is used to control the actuators. The system provides simple menu interface displayed on LCD for setting the desired current and temperature set-points. The project firmware is written in Basic and compiled using Bascom AVR.

Electroplating Control
Project Firmware, Schematic and Documentation
circuitcellar.com