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Choosing a plating material for cast iron

2004

Dear All,

I'm Akhsan from Indonesia, I'm engineer in mold and die manufacturing. I've a project to plate a cast iron for protect corrosion and improve wear resistant with electroplating.

Please give advise for choosing the suitable material to plate it. If I plate with nickel or decorative chrome, it is a suitable for it?

Thanks

Akhsan -
mold and die manufacturing - Jakarta, Indonesia

Decorative nickel+chrome plating performs basically that, it gives a pleasant look. It can be engineered to protect from corrosion but plated surface geometry has to be adjusted (eliminate sharp corners, deep recesses, etc.), something not possible with functional parts. Tight tolerances are hardly kept and few shops doing this kind of work like to deal with molds and tools, they like long runs of parts that are good candidates for their work. I recommend you to find a mold plater and specify electroless nickel. It is extensively used for protection of molds because it is hard, corrosion resistant, almost insensitive to geometry and tolerances are easily kept.

Guillermo Marrufo
Monterrey, NL, Mexico
2004