Sound technical content, curated with aloha by
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

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Question on Zinc Olive Drab Plate

Two different companies are experiencing blistered / flaky plating on two different components from two different platers. The plate is zinc olive drab.

Any help will be greatly appreciated

Sincerely,

Robert O'Neill
- Angola, Indiana

The shopping list of plating failure causes is huge. Now I have return questions, how are you involved with two different companies and two different platers? What do you intend to do with any responses?

Then, you do not list base metals, heat treat status, cleanliness, polish residue, preservatives, and the specific processes used by the platers.

The truth of the matter is that it takes monitoring of the parts from start to finish of a qualified person to trouble shoot and fix the problem.

The generic causes of poor adhesion are poor cleaning and poor activation, but there are dozens of other items or variations of these two.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

You really don't give enough information. Typically, when plating is flaking it is in your case zinc flaking from the base metal. When that happens it is generally a problem in the preplate process. It is also possible in alkaline zinc plating to have a problem with latent blistering generally due to out of balance or excessive brightener components.

Without information regarding the processing of the parts, base metal, etc. there is not much else to say.

Gene Packman
process supplier - Great Neck, New York

Well, it could be ten different companies having problems with ten different parts from ten different platers, but it will still have to start with some details like what the parts are, and what they're made of, and what zinc process is being run. if the zinc itself is flaking, the chromate probably doesn't have much to do with it. But the oil used in machining, or the steel supplier, or the baking cycle might.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

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