Adhesion of Nickel plate onto Stainless Steel

A. Hi Enrique. Wood's Nickel would be my first choice, but there is no such thing as a foolproof process.

The cycle could be soak clean, electroclean, acid dip, Wood's nickel (you may or may not want to start with reverse current), Watt's bright nickel, chrome plate, with rinses in between. But I don't like to claim that this is a 'complete cycle' because there are many other possible steps, there is no guarantee that this process will work for you, and there is a wealth of background information that you should have which I am not sure whether you have or not.

5 microns of nickel is only for a very mild service condition. Best of luck.

A. ASTM B254 entitled "Practice for Preparation of and Electroplating on Stainless Steel" should provide all the answers to this question. There are many options to use for this procedure but I can't say that any are "fool-proof" as some fool will always prove me wrong. The ASTM spec can be ordered from ASTM at www.astm.org.

A. I agree with Ted, there is no "foolproof" process for plating on stainless steel. Here at Oneida we routinely plate nickel over many different stainless alloys, and Wood's nickel activation is our activator of choice.

A. Degreasing (solvent, soap, electro)

Acid dipping (HCl 20%)

Electro-pickling (etching) cathode of Pb plate

5 Volt 30 sec room temperature

Wood's nickel strike

Wanted plating

A. I routinely electroplate bottom area of stainless pots with 450 microns copper. The pots are used over direct flame. For this application I use 2 min anodic and 6 min cathodic cycle in Wood's Nickel, as recommended A.K. Graham's handbook [on AbeBooks or eBay or Amazon] . The results are excellent.

A. We plate silver onto a variety of stainless steels, including 304, 316 and 431, and find that the most successful method of activation is achieved using a proprietary product called Actane L-59 from Enthone-OMI. I don't know if it has a different name in the US. I think it's main ingredient is sulfuric, but I'm not sure what else is in it.

Our procedure is:

• Soak
• 25% NaOH 90 °C (no electroclean)
• Actane L-59 anodic 3 minutes, cathodic 2 minutes, 1 ASD
• Wood's Nickel Strike
• Silver Plate

Of course the last two steps would depend on your final finish.

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Ed. note: Thanks, John.
Readers: let's leave it that proprietary electro-acids before the Wood's strike may be effective, rather than trying to compare different brands of proprietary electro-acids :-)

A. Hi Ryan. Plating shops may charge more than you want to pay or can afford to pay; but as they struggle to remain in business, I hope they can bite their tongues in response to your "charge way way way too much to plate" comment :-)

But on to the technical stuff ...

a). If you have any doubt whether the flatware is clean enough, just scrub it with a stiff toothbrush and powdered Pumice [affil links] before electrocleaning, rather than experimenting with "various products", ultrasonics, etc. It's faster, easier, and better for tiny onesy-twosy work.

b). I don't think you should go directly from the electroclean to Wood's Nickel, but should have an HCl dip in between (plus rinsing between each step, of course).

c). Getting good gold adhesion is easier than getting good adhesion for other metals because gold is relatively soft and weak, and "perfect adhesion" is only 22,000 psi whereas other metals may require 3 to 4 times as much adhesion. 108 A/m^2 is sufficient current for this case. Further inferring from Dini's "Electrodeposition".
an electro acid is not necessary when the subsequent plating is gold, just the Wood's Nickel strike looks sufficient (of course, inferences are subject to error since there are many stainless alloys, etc.)

d). Yes, HCl is hydrochloric acid, but Kim is unlikely to see your posting since his was from long ago. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi again. My plumber charges $100 an hour, and no way can a plating shop take your 6 spoons from start to finish in less than an hour. My Jeep dealer charges non-refundable $125 to put it on a lift so they can tell me how much they'll charge to fix it. My roofer wants $200 to look at the roof to tell me what's involved in fixing the leak, although he had promised a warranty. How much did the plating shop charge you to look at your forks? Time is money, and plating shops are in the same situation as plumbers, roofers, and mechanics. Remember that no employee at most plating shops can touch the chemicals you plan to use unless s/he is receiving annual haz-mat training, so I hope you are at least wearing goggles [on eBay or Amazon] and rubber gloves [on eBay or Amazon] if you're doing this.

1). muriatic acid [affil links] is commercial HCl, so yes.

2). The methods you described are fine, just not as easy and reliable. Take one day at a time and successfully plate one single fork using safe and easy pumice before you worry about doing 20 at a time with chemicals.

3). 108 A^m2 means 108 Amps per square meter of surface area being plated, i.e., 0.07 Amps per square inch. Good luck.

Regards,