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Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ

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Zinc plating rubber to metal bonded products

Q. I'm in the automotive parts industry. I'm inquiring on rubber to metal bonded finishing treatment. Currently, we paint our finished products. I would like to increase the shelf live of our finished products by zinc plating those rubber to metal bonded finished products. I encounter rubber peeling from the metal during quality control. My question is whether Zinc plating is harmful to rubber to metal bonded products (rubber+adhesive+metal)? If so, is there an alternative treatments of rubber to metal bonded finished products?

Ari Luki
Automotive parts manufacturer - Indonesia
July 15, 2009

A. Dear Ari,

I think in your case your need Zinc-Ca-Phosphating process, that has good glue bonding property and good for painting as well.

Good luck.

Tony Chandra
- Jakarta, Indonesia
July 25, 2009

Zinc phosphate for rubber to metal bonding

"Phosphating of Metals"
by Werner Rausch
phos_rausch1991

on AbeBooks

or eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

"Phosphating & Metal Pretreatment"
by D.B. Freeman
phos_freeman1991

on AbeBooks

or eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

Q. Can anyone please elaborate on the Zinc-Ca-Phosphating process.

We are having a problem of rubber to metal bond failure if we use the zinc coating by electrolytic deposition technique. I think the electrolyte and the current destroys the rubber to metal bond. Your help will be much appreciated.

Gagan Jain
- Lucknow, UP , India
January 6, 2017

A. Hi Gagan. I cannot personally relate successes or failures with zinc phosphating for rubber bonding, but if you search the site for "rubber bonding" you will find a number of threads discussing it. Calcium modified zinc phosphating is a tweak that reduces the grain size of zinc phosphate coatings and offers other advantages as well. Please search the site for "calcium zinc phosphate" and you will learn a lot about it. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
January 2017

A. Plasma treatment of rubber parts would solve your problem. Generally rubber is hydrophobic. Plasma treatment would make it hydrophylic and promote adhesion. Treating the metal part also would be an additional advantage.

H.R. Prabhakara - Consultant
Bangalore Plasmatek - Bangalore Karnataka India
January 7, 2017

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