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  for Metal Finishing since 1989
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Blisters on Plated Surface

Dear Sir,
Let me introduce to you. I'm R Dhiman from India. I came to know about you from Net. I'm in electroplating industry and facing a problem of blister formation on Electroplated surface.

This problem started some 4~5 days back. I have checked all my process and parameters and ensured that no changes were done. Blister formation is happening on Plain steel parts having length more than 150mm irrespective of width of the components. Blister formation reduced when current was reduced but it added to my process cycle.

Please advice on this.

Regards,

Rajesh Dhiman
- Faridabad, Haryana
2007

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2007

It is difficult to do anything but guess with the amount of information given--what metal and what plating process/parameters.
As a general statement, blisters result from plating a part that is not properly cleaned.
A change in the alloy of the metal to a very tiny amount more of a material that makes it more "free cutting" can make your present process inadequate, even tho it worked OK before.
On high carbon steel it is possible to over clean and/or overetch the metal and get thousands of tiny tiny blisters with some (and not other)follow on plating.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

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January 14, 2009

Please help

I'm operating a machine shop. We manufactured some parts to be Zinc plated, SC3 type II. After the parts were returned from our plating supplier, we put them in an oven for 20 minutes at 400 °F to prepare for powder coating. When removed the parts, we saw a lot of blistering. Please help.

The material is cold rolled steel.

Thanks

Hai Tran
machine shop - San diego, California, USA