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Pulse Plating and hydrogen Embrittlement

Hydrogen Embrittlement (HE) is always a problem in electroplating baths coupled with hydrogen evolution. Does anybody have experience on HE using pulse plating? Compared to DC plating, does pulse plating reduce or increase HE ?

Thanks.

Dave Gche
- COSTK
1999

I plate stainless steel utensils with 450 microns copper. To get the advantage of fine grain and superior metal distribution, I built pulse current power supplies and the plating did come out good.

As the stainless steel quality deteriorated, I had lots of complaints about the utensils cracking.

I changed over to Periodic reverse plating and the complaints vanished. So there is a strong reason to believe that pulse plating causes more hydrogen to diffuse into the substrate.

Yashawant deval
electroplating shop - Pune, Maharashtra, India
1999