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Inspection of plating

How to inspect the plating surfaces? How to detect the plating by visually?

Anil Ramachandran Nair
- India

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Anil,

The first thing to do, if you are using a proprietary (brand name) plating solution, is to look through the technical specification sheets which are provided by the manufacturer.

What type of plating are you doing? Is it supposed to be bright? semi-bright? matte (or, "dull")?

After you have plated a component, is there a darkness around the high current density (outer) sections of the component? There shouldn't be. If your plated parts are patchy or peeling, you may have a cleaning problem; if they are "burned", or dark around the edges, you may have an additive problem or you may be applying too much direct current to the parts. The best visual inspection is usually determined when you decide whether or not the plated part "looks" like you expected it to look. Most of the time, you will be looking for an even and consistent deposit with some level of "brightness" and with no blistering, peeling, or burning.

Randall Fowler - Fowler Industrial Plating, LLC
Cleveland, Tennessee, USA