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Immersion silver adhesion to copper?

Based on your January comments regarding immersion plating: Do you know how the adhesion of Immersion silver is to copper?

Evelyn Baldwin
- Andover, Massachusetts
2003

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2003

Hi, Evelyn.

It's not apparent to me what statement you are referring to, or who you are addressing because there are over 50,000 topic threads here, but immersion silvering is a widely practiced process on such things as bus bars, and home resilvering of platters and trays, so the adhesion is adequate for some purposes.

If you can point us to the statement in question, we can probably elaborate about your situation. Thanks.

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

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Copper must be silver struck before entering a full strength silver cyanide plating bath to AVOID immersion layer of silver forming since the adhesion is marginal at best and, in general, won't pass any legitimate adhesion test (OK maybe it will pass Scotch tape test). It's OK for buss bar in a plating shop since the adhesion there isn't critical - they would just re-immerse it!

Milt Stevenson, Jr.
Syracuse, New York
2003