Is pearl bright nickel same as satin nickel

A. Nickel or any other plating has little to do with the finished texture. The texture of the substrate is revealed through the plating. For bright reflective Nickel the substrate must be polished to the reflective degree desired before plating.
For Satin nickel finish lightly sandblast before plating.

  John, that's an opinion I can't disagree with nor fully agree with :-)

Yes, bead blasting or lightly sanding before plating will give a finish which some people call satin, but other platers will call that brushed nickel and reserve the word 'satin' for pearlescent finishes achieved with special additives.

And, yes, consumers who want their old articles replated do need to understand that this involves polishing them first because plating will not fill gouges, scratches, and pits. But it's not quite true that the substrate must be polished to the reflective degree desired before plating; bright self-leveling nickel adds a substantial degree of smoothness and reflectivity to roughly polished surfaces, while retaining a satin finish on bead blasted or brushed areas.

A. You and me both.

Indeed this is the confluence of a technology problem plus a semantics problem :-)

What Mssrs. Mohan and Fuselier are calling a "satin nickel" finish is what some other people would call a "brushed nickel" finish. Some people would describe satin nickel not as a brushed or bead blasted finish but as a pearlescent, opalescent, or "frosty" finish not too different from a fine silver look or actual satin (that appearance is not achieved by bead blasting but via special additives in the plating bath).

Again, I'm certainly not presuming to call Mssrs. Mohan and Fuselier wrong! I'm just saying that the problem includes a basically different interpretation as to what a piece of slang means.

I'm afraid that for the foreseeable future this issue will remain problematical and you'll need to provide good photographs or actual test parts to convey what finish you seek.

A. Being a decorative plater I am used to the semantics involved in describing finishes. What one person calls satin another calls brushed. What a third person calls satin another calls frosted.

There is no specification or standard for textured finishes that I know of. My best advise is to process several samples yourself to the desired finish texture and provide your plater with one of these "Master Samples". You and your QC dept. keep the rest for incoming inspection purposes.

A. As the last respondent said, semantics is a large part of all definitions of metal finishing. I produce two basic types of Nickel plated finish: either lightly sandblasted, which for want of a better term, I call "Satin". This is most useful when there is some light corrosion or pitting which can be minimized in appearance with this non-reflective plating. It also easy to keep clean clean and does not show fingerprints. This is excellent for a firearm.

The other type is a highly reflective mirror finish which can only be successfully applied on a polished metal surface. There is a certain amount of self-leveling in some plating procedures, but a mirror finish will never be developed without the underlying strata being first polished. This means that the underlying metal must be relatively free of flaws.

As for buffing or polishing Nickel after plating, this is dangerous business because heat and unequal expansion may cause the plating to delaminate.

A. When a coating of Nickel is applied to Zinc alloy metal, it will resemble very much a stainless steel finish. In other words, Brushed Nickel will be close to stainless steel finish in appearance. Item is usually Machine Buffed to remove shine. Satin Nickel on the other hand is Gray matte finish, resembles Light Silver.

A. These terms are colloquialisms rather than rigid specifications, Way, so it is difficult to answer.

To me, though, I have no trouble visualizing the smooth iridescent look of a pearl, and the idea that nickel can be made to look sort of that way with special additives. I also have no trouble appreciating what brushed nickel is -- which is accomplished by sanding, or the matte finish of glass bead blasting before plating.

But when someone says "satin nickel", I for one don't know whether they are thinking of a pearlescent finish or a brushed finish or a bead blasted finish -- and I think a lot of people agree with me.

A. Pearl Brite is an Enthone brand name, satin nickel a way to describe the looks of it.

A. Thanks, Eric. We appreciate your advising us of this and are very happy to concede "Pearl Brite" to Enthone as a trade name.

But as noted, I've heard bead blasted (and brushed) nickel called "satin nickel" by so many people in so many venues, and decades before the development of Pearl Brite, that I can't demand that all and sundry stop calling it satin :-)
Actually, neither pearl-like nickel nor bead blasted nickel looks quite like satin to me :-)

Thanks again.

A. I have to agree that Satin, Brushed, Pearl and other like terms are very subjective.

My company markets "Polished", "Satin", and "Matte" finishes. Polished is self explanatory. Our "Matte" finish is more like the bead blasted or pearl finish that some of our competitors call a "Frost" finish. Our "Satin" is more like a brushed finish except the lines we produce are very straight and even unlike "Brushed" finishes where the lines tend to be more random in direction and length.

So … call them what you will. Just make sure your finisher understands what you want.

 Thanks, Tim. Your explanation of your own vocabulary is helpful, and as you say, the same words mean different things to different people.

A. I think Satin Nickel and Pearl nickel are the same thing. My company is one of the biggest suppliers of many world wide high class sanitary company, and our customers demand plating in varying finishes and call them "matte","satin","frost", even "special" -- but the only difference is substrate mechanical prep.
The "satin chrome" is just like this precess in our company" semi-bright nickel - "pearl" nickel - Chrome".
This is basic precess, and we also change it to make a new surface treatment, just like "semi-bright->brushed->pearl->chrome(->PVD)".

A. Bead blasting first will give you a somewhat matte finish. We take a different approach, namely polish first, apply a thick layer of electrolytic bright nickel, then brush the nickel. We bead blast only if the surface is in pretty bad shape, i.e., has scratches that we can't remove easily with polishing.

A. Hi Steven. Yikes, it wasn't bad enough with just "brushed", "matte", blasted", "satin", and "pearl" ... now we add "butler finish" and "hotel finish" to the mix :-)

Thread 32538 offers instruction for how to achieve this "butler finish" but it's not clear to me whether, when it's wanted on a nickel plated item, it's done before plating; it sounds like something you would do after plating, but I don't know.

Regards,

A. Hi again Steven. Your posting is here for any reader to help you :-)

As noted, there are a half-dozen or more ways to achieve a matte, dull or non-reflective nickel or nickel-chrome surface. The broadest range of looks is available based on mechanical distortion of the surface before plating via bead blasting, brushing, sanding, etc. Another path is via things done during the plating process, such as not using brighteners, or adding tiny particles for composite plating or the use of special surfactants that cloud up to distort the plating and make it non-reflective. Finally, there are the paths which you are apparently limited to, some sort of chemical or abrasive process after bright plating.

You might commiserate or share war stories with Dave S. of thread 26881 who is trying to chemically age bright nickel plating to a dull look. Or you can attempt Dan P.'s method of thread 32538, using brushes plus water or oil for a Butler finish.

But what I think is the main issue here is trying to know a priori exactly what you must do to some finish you don't know too much about, to get it to look like something you have in mind. As I mentioned to Dave S., the missing link here may be further experimentation. Can you get some scrap nickel plated material to practice on, and try your ideas on, and see what you can learn? The non-reflective items you mention are not done by abrasion after plating, they're done via particles or surfactant clouds during plating -- while it's probably possible to come reasonably close via some sort of post-plating abrasion (especially Dan P.'s method), I just don't think anyone is going to be able to provide the answer you seek of just exactly how to do it. Oh, and there's maybe yet another approach: a matte lacquer or clearcoat. Sorry :-(

Regards,