The authoritative public forum
  for Metal Finishing since 1989
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Metal cleaning

2002

I recently read your page on "Electroplating--how it works".

You mentioned "properly cleaned". I want to find out exactly what the "cleaning solution" and cleaning procedure are.

A good friend of mine lost his machine shop to a fire. He managed to recover a portion of the tools, however soot and the chemical used to extinguish the fire are now heavily coated on them. What can he use to remove the combination of soot and fire extinguishing chemicals?

If you can provide me with this information, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Montie Pierce
- Fallon, Nevada, USA

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2002

I may be misunderstanding your situation, but your friend is not planning to electroplate his tools, is he?

If not, then the procedures used on various substrates in preparation for applying the various kinds of plating don't seem particularly relevant to his situation. For example, the typical alkaline electrocleaning used as the first step in many kinds of electroplating would immediately destroy the chrome plating on any of his tools.

There are companies that specialize in cleaning up after fires but I have never seen them in operation. My guess would be that pressure washers, detergents, and/or steam cleaner ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] would be central ingredients in the process. The strong alkalis and acids used in electroplating would probably destroy the finish on everything they touched, and quite possibly completely destroy the tools.

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