51037

Experience with chrome additive  

January 23, 2009

Greetings.

We do industrial hard chrome using a standard sulfate bath.

Chromic Acid: 33 oz/gal
Sulphuric Acid: 3.3^^0.33 oz/gal
Temp: 135F

Recently [a product] has been brought to our attention which claims 35% plating efficiency and 50% faster plating speeds.

Has anyone here used this additive or have any opinions on it?

Regards,

Brett Zastre
Plating Shop Employee - Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Hi, Brett. The patents have run out on the first generation of etch-free high efficiency hard chrome additives, so there are now a number of brands available. I'm not sure of the patent situation on the second generation, but there is apparently more than one supplier.

In the early days of finishing.com we posted a number of threads comparing one brand of something to another, and in each case we found it to be a really bad idea. The internet is too anonymous, and the idea seems to draw shills posting with fictitious names and posing as satisfied or dissatisfied customers. And no matter how pure anyone's intention, you can't get away from vested interest anyway, even if it's merely that Shop Owner A likes Salesperson B's donuts more than Salesperson C's, so tends to be more sympathetic towards her product line than his. This idea probably even extends to the forum operators perhaps viewing postings by our advertisers more charitably and less in need of editing than postings by their competitors :-)

So we would encourage anyone to relate their experience and satisfaction with high speed additives generically rather than by product name. Thanks.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

The standard chrome bath is a 100 : 1 ratio, not a 10 : 1 ratio.
I used a bath that worked quite well, as well as a standard one. In the dark ages one company advertised a 40% efficiency bath, but when you read the fine print, it was not practical for a job shop, but their 25% efficiency worked quite well.
Plate speed can be drastically increased by using conforming anodes with a close anode to cathode distance in a 140F tank and a higher voltage and still control where the chrome goes by tweaking the anode.

James Watts
- FL

Sorry I meant 0.33 oz/gal of sulphuric in the first post.

Brett Zastre
- Winnipeg, MB, Canada