Considering starting zinc plating, but new to it

A. Hi, James. You may not realize then that plating is a jobshop oriented business and there will be plating shops in your area who would be happy to do the plating for you if you would rather go that way. Most of the major corporations have dropped out of in-house plating and farm it out to plating shops. The best way to start learning might be by getting some parts plated and seeing how they do it. Good luck.

A. James,

the very first thing to do is to understand customer (or market) needs. Review with metal component manufacturers (stamping, machining) what are they requiring. Review what specs are they requiring and volume. Read and get informed about the different kind of process you can install (acid, alkaline, rack, barrel). From the market info you can define the kind of process you will need.

Saludos

A. Because my eyes are blurring with HTML code, and in response to my commander, General Laziness ... :) I looked into this a little.

Toowoomba is a town about 60 miles east of Brisbane, population about 150,000. There are, at least, several job shops in Brisbane. I looked at the website for one of them that has apparently been in business for a long time ...long enough to have done Cadmium plating on hand grenade pins for grenades used by the ANZACS. I do not know if they do Zinc plating, but that's a start.

Plating is by no means an easy or straightforward business. But, if there are no plating shops in your town, I suppose it boils down to economics ... shipping West to the coast for plating, then back, or learning it yourself.

If you opt for the latter, there is a correspondence course offered by Kushner Electroplating School, of Sunnyvale, CA. USA. I've seen the course materials, and they are wonderfully well written and quite understandable by a beginner. I've also met Dr. Art Kushner, the owner, and it's seldom I've met a more knowledgeable or genial man.

After a bit more coding, I think I'll pick up some Foster's Lager ... and hoist one to those ANZACS.

Cheers, and good luck.

A. James, not knowing when you posted [Ed. note: 2007] zinc plating is not really very complicated or expensive. We plated thousands of parts when I was in business, (now retired) and it ain't all that hard.
Regards,
Ken.