Letter 17009

ZINC-IRON salt spray hours [Tennessee]

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I work for an industrial supply company, and have a customer that is using Zinc-Iron Black. This spec calls for a minimum of 200 to white rust and 338 to red at a .0005 thickness (12 microns). I am having a little difficulty finding a plater in the US that will certify to these specs. I am being told that they can only certify this 140 to white rust?? Are there standards that dictate what a plater can certify to like there are with zinc and zinc dichromate in the ASTM book. I know the ASTM B 842 covers Zinc-Iron, but I will be honest with you, I can't understand what it is telling me about actual salt spray hours. It seems that other countries like Japan and India can meet these specs but again in the US I am having difficulty.

Jennifer Sterchi
- Lexington, TN, USA

Generally, it is not a matter of what a plater can do but of the liability a plater may have. Therefore, they will use the corrosion resistance information from their supplier of the process. Typically, many processes exceed the amount of corrosion resistance in the literature. Since a plater cannot test every part, they will want to have a large margin for error in what they promise.

Gene Packman
- Syosset NY

My firm, Anoplate, has been supplying black chromated zinc/iron plating to the automotive and other demanding industries for over 3 years now and it is our experience that our black zinc/iron, sold under the name Black Ziron, will indeed meet your 200 hours to white / 338 hours to red at 1/2 mil ( 0.0005 inch ) thickness. I checked this out with our chemical supplier and he too sees no problem; use a quality black chromate and a process-control driven plater will achieve this requirement quite consistently.

Milt Stevenson, Jr. Anoplate Corp Syracuse, NY, USA

Being a process control driven plater, I promise 600 hours to white rust and 1000 hours to red rust FOR VAT PLATED PARTS and the same hours as you have specifed for barrel plated parts with zinc -iron black.

The issue here is to differentiate between barrel and rack plated specs. Zinc iron baths cannot be handled as easily as other zinc plating baths and your plater has his work cut out if he has to get proper results. Either that or you are getting confused with zinc-black which has very poor SST resistance .

Khozema Vahanwala Automaxx   Bangalore, Karnataka, India

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