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Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Pine Beach, NJ
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for Metal Finishing 1989-2025
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Learn more about automatic electroplating production lines
Q. Hello
I am researching about automatic electroplating lines, but it seems I hit a dead end.
Is there any book, detailed manuals or any other resources to learn more about machines, technologies, types of cranes and best practices?
- Tehran, Iran
December 28, 2024
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A. Hi Abkaryar,
There are three typical ways material may be handled for electroplating:
• Continuously, spool to spool, like wire or the metal bases of DIP electronics,
• Discreetly, with a bunch of individual parts hanging on a plating rack,
• In rotating plating barrels, for parts like fasteners which are small enough and rugged enough for bulk processing.
The highest production machines are automatic return-type machines, where the tanks are laid out in almost an oval pattern, with some sort of central mechanism which lifts the racks or barrels more or less simultaneously and advances them more of less all at the same time to the next tank or processing station.
More popular these days are 'programmed hoist' lines where one or more hoists travel back and forth on an overhead track above the plating tanks, lifting one workbar full of plating racks at a time from one tank to another. The hoist or hoists don't stay with one workbar but follow a 'time-wave diagram' intended to maximize production while allowing optimum immersion times in each tank. For example, the hoist may lift one workbar out of the plating tank and deposit it into the first-rinse- following-plating, then lift a workbar out of the last-rinse-before- plating and deposit it into the now vacant station in the plating tank.
There are few relatively current plating books, none of which, as far as I know, cover automatic plating machines. The best books, old though they may be, are probably the Canning Handbook and the Electroplating Engineering Handbook.
Moving on to personal preferences, I advise choosing a hoist system which minimizes moving parts near to any operators or attendants on the plating line. Programmed hoists/cranes require some sort of vertical 'stiff legs' and I greatly prefer when such legs are well inboard of the edge of the plating tanks, and the load is cantilevered out in front of the stiff legs rather than the stiff legs being out at the end of the tanks where they can endanger humans. I was a court witness on maimings and deaths and don't find that design acceptable.
Luck & Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
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