Technical notes on electroplating, written for the people who have to specify it. No marketing, just what we have learned running plating lines for twenty years.
Racking, pretreatment, plating, passivation, inspection. Why wire mesh is harder to plate than flat parts, and the two variables that decide whether you get a clean deposit or burnt edges.
Appearance, hardness, corrosion resistance, cost, and application, compared side by side. Plus why most decorative parts use both, in a specific order.
Pretreatment, plating, post-treatment, inspection. The four plating methods and when each one is the right choice for your part.
Neutral salt spray testing is the standard way to compare plating suppliers on corrosion resistance. Here is what the number means, what it doesn't mean, and how to write it into a spec.
Eco-friendly plating is not one process. It is a set of controls on chemistry, wastewater, and emissions. Here is what it covers and why it matters for your supply chain.
Electropolishing is plating in reverse. It dissolves the microscopic peaks on a stainless surface, leaving it brighter, more corrosion resistant, and easier to clean.
Hard chrome has been in industrial use for over seventy years because nothing has replaced it for hardness, wear resistance, and dimensional repair.
Five things to check before you place a plating order in China: finish range, verifiable quality, environmental compliance, capacity, and responsiveness.
Automation on a plating line is not mainly about speed. It is about removing the human variable, which is where batch-to-batch inconsistency comes from.
A mirror finish is decided before the part reaches the chrome tank. Substrate polishing sets the ceiling; the nickel undercoat and the chrome layer do the rest.
Thickness drives appearance, wear, and corrosion performance. Here is how decorative and hard chrome differ, and the three ways thickness is actually verified.
Peeling is an adhesion failure, and adhesion is decided during pretreatment. Here are the real causes and what a supplier should be doing about them.
