Laser Gold was applied to the interior of this stainless steel vessel in order to reflect internal heat generated by the process that took place inside. The vessel was treated as its own tank; that is, solutions were sequentially added and drained similar to the way a washing machine functions.

Some idea of the size of the vessel can be judged by the internal electrode that was inserted prior to plating. This electrode served three functions.

Internal electrode used for plating the tank

The first was to displace volume in order to reduce the amount of solutions required for the plating process and secondly to hold the platinum-clad titanium screening that forms the anode for the process, and finally to hold some 250 rinsing nozzles required to make sure that there was no cross-contamination between each solution.