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Gold plating imitation/costume jewelry

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Q. Sir,
How can we apply a heavy gold wet plating after TiN coating in PVD machine? After TiN coating which anode is used in PVD machine for getting best adhesive power for plating gold.

Q. How can we obtain a gold color on brass items without using genuine gold, which is too expensive?
What is the method of coating brass items in artificial gold (to look like gold plated )

A. Hi Siri. There is more than one way to skin a cat (love those barnyard metaphors), but one way being discussed here is to do PVD coating of TiN on the jewelry in lieu of gold plating. Another way is to electrophoretic lacquer the jewelry with a gold colored dye in the lacquer tank or in a post-dip tank. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
November 2013

Looking for pen / brush plating kit

Q. Hello ... I'm based in Mumbai, India. I have a retail store offering imitation jewelry. Most of the jewelry is on base metals brass, copper. These pieces of jewelry are studded with CZ stones and other colored stones as well as resin. The pieces are yellow gold plated and others are nickel plated or rhodium plated.
Looking at the growing demand of the customers, if I have a piece in yellow gold plating they want it in white and vice versa. Because of this I am losing a lot of sales.
Can this community please guide me where can I get a plating kit that will fulfill my need.
Also need your expertise, if pen plating or brush plating is the right kind of kit I'm looking for. As the imitation jewelry is already studded with stones I would not want to damage the stones while working on plating. Also I would not want to contaminate the solution and would want to use the solutions in small quantities.
As it is imitation jewelry I'll be working on, please suggest me an inexpensive way to work this out.
Thanks a lot.

A. Hi Munesh. To locate a vendor of brush plating equipment you can view our Equipment Directory, which lists several international suppliers, or you can contact any plating process distributor in Mumbai, or you can google "hobby plating india". Sorry, we don't suggest vendors or brands in this forum (why?)

Jewelry usually can be tank plated, and you'll probably prefer that to brush plating. Normally the plating process will not harm stones or vice versa (pearls and artificially tinted stones might be an exception), but "resin" is a very broad term so I wouldn't be too confident about that being safe in a plating tank. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
June 2013

Q. Thanks a lot Ted for the reply. Also have some jewelry that has stones glued on. Like for example earrings, some stones are glued on. Will the tank plating harm the glue and stones will fall off ?
I'm new to this so want to be sure before I put my money on any kit.

Thanks a lot.

Munesh Khawani
- Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
June 25, 2013

A. Hi. My guess is that most glues can withstand the plating process, but some can't. Without any trial-and-error experience in this myself, I wouldn't have any way of knowing the signs of likely success versus impending trouble. I hope someone with experience will let us know, but it's always very difficult to enter a business where you have no experience, and receive no training, and not run up against a steep learning curve :-)

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
June 30, 2013

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Q. Hello Ted, Thanks for your reply.
I've been watching videos of pen plating, looks quite simple. If anyone who is experienced in the field of jewelry here can shed some light and guide with his experience, will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks once again.
Munesh

Munesh Khawani [returning]
- Mumbai, India
July 2, 2013

Is there such thing as a really long-lasting gold plating?

Q. Hello,

I am a jewelry artisan, and I make pieces cut out of sterling silver sheet which I then have gold plated in 18K. I am really frustrated with the whole process of plating and I'm in desperate need for a better solution.
I have opted for a nickel free process, and the thickness of the plate is approximately 0.4 micron (I have had the thickness analysed by a company that had the required machine).
The plating thickness is the maximum which I can find here in small plating shops, since the larger ones require volumes which I don't have.

My problem is that the current plating isn't durable enough, it begins to tarnish after about 6 or 7 months. Customers are really disappointed when this happens because they kind of expect gold plated silver items to last as long as solid gold...

My questions are:
1 - Would using a nickel under plate really increase the durability of the plating?
2 - Is there a coating that can be applied on top of the plating that would significantly increase the durability?
3 - Would increasing the thickness to 2 microns really increase the durability? (to several years I mean)? For some reason the plating shop says that the current thickness (0.4 micron) is the maximum they can do. Why is increasing the thickness so complicated?
3 - I have heard about PVD nitride or titanium coating, can that be applied to jewelry? Would such a coating on brass be more durable than my current gold plated silver? And would the costs be prohibitive?

Thank you in advance for your expert advice.

July 2013

A. Hi Sebastien.

We appended your inquiry to a thread where most of your questions are answered. But I'll summarize for a sense of continuity . . .

Gold plated pocket watches have lasted a century and more, but the plating was very very thick -- outrageous by today's standards. So, if there were no economic restriction, the answer would simply be thick gold plating. 0.4 microns is 16 millionths of an inch; the plating on those old pocket watches was 50X as thick. There is no technical reason your local platers should restrict you to 0.4 microns, although there may be logistic reasons.

So, you can thicken the gold plating and/or protect the gold plating with something else, and/or simulate gold plating -- or mix any or those ideas in any combination, as discussed above:

- One approach is simply to clearcoat the gold plated jewelry, and there are many ways to do that. Asif mentions electrocoating; others have used UV hardenable clearcoat such as you may see used in a manicure salon; another approach is 2-part automotive clearcoat. Which approach is best depends on volume as well as technical issues. Building an e-coat facility for a handful of items will be impractical, and even contracting the work out for electrocoating may be prohibitive, but buying UV clearcoat and a UV lamp may work for you and other low-volume artisans.

- The titanium nitride PVD idea is great for high volumes but involves a multi-million dollar vacuum chamber and you may not find a shop that will do it for an artisan.

My feeling is that your best approach may be to insist upon 1 micron of gold plating, and then apply a UV curable lacquer yourself. That should give you reasonably durable and long lasting jewelry. A "barrier layer" plating between the silver and the gold is not a bad idea, but it probably shouldn't be nickel because that is already restricted in some countries and may become restricted in additional ones. I'd say try just the additional thickness and UV clearcoat.

Regards,

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

How long will 20 micron gold plating last?

Q. Thank You Mr. Mooney in advance for your wonderful responses to all of the questions being sent your way. I am not in the Jewelry business, just a consumer looking to get an honest answer. Now here is my question:

I am considering the purchase of a luxury watch from a well known and respectable 100 year Swiss manufacturer. It has a 2-tone bracelet that is stainless and 18 kt gold. I have been told it is 20 microns gold plated and on their website the cite the plating as 2N. I gather the 2N is a reference to the color? Since I cannot afford a solid gold link bracelet timepiece, I am curious as to how long I can expect this plating to reasonably last? I am hoping to pass this down to my grandchildren so my concern is with durability.

Thanks again.

A. Hi Kim. Thanks for the kind thoughts. I am no expert in this but, yes, I do understand "1N", "2N" and "3N" to be European color standards for gold. 20 microns is a very very very substantial thickness, as people in the costume jewelry business often find 1 micron unaffordable, and are perennially seeking an alternative as you see on this page. 20 microns will last 20x as long as 1 micron.

Although you can eventually wear through anything if worn every day. . .

Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky -- Kansas, "Dust in the Wind"

. . . 20 micron gold is very very high quality that should last at least decades in everyday wear, and probably many many decades if more rarely worn. It's super, super high quality.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
September 23, 2013

adv.

I want to start golden dye color plating plant on imitation jewelry.
Which company can I trust and get training also?

Golden yellow costume jewelry brooch -- what is it plated with?

Q. I am a science buff, and have a number of varied interest including any sciences associated with metals. I recently found a bright, gold-colored costume jewelry brooch buried in the sand at an ocean beach. It had been set with a number of glass "rubies", some of which were missing from the piece. It was obviously a very cheap piece of costume jewelry, but despite the salt, sand and abrasive wear it still shined with a fairly impressive gold finish. There were no signs of corrosion on the plating at all. The piece was certainly not worth restoring, but being a frugal metals "scrapper", I decided that if the piece were actually gold electroplated, it might be worth saving the gold plate and adding it to a small container of gold flakes that I've ben accumulating from various sources for a while. So I snipped the brooch up into smaller pieces and submerged them in a small container of muriatic acid. As the pieces dissolved over the next 24 hours, it was apparent that the base metal for the piece was some sort of "pot metal" (maybe high in zinc) due to its high reactivity and quickness to dissolve. The pot metal core had a copper coating that took longer to dissolve and ultimately turned the acid that characteristic emerald green color. What I didn't expect was to see that ALL TRACES of the gold-colored plating dissolved along with the copper! The acid was plain muriatic (definitely not gold-dissolving Aqua Regia). This was a fun exercise, but I am very curious as to what the gold-colored plating on this piece of costume jewelry might have been. Hours of internet searching have not produced a satisfactory answer. Does anyone know what this yellow-gold-colored plating might have been? Thanks!

A. Hi Ed. We appended your question to a thread about gold plating and imitation gold plating of costume jewelry. The coating might have been a gold-toned lacquer over nickel plating, but was more likely a titanium nitride PVD coating..

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
November 13, 2013

Q. Dear Sir, we want to know whether it is possible to do PVD plating on copper items with soldering which will look like gold. And it has some parts micro dull and some parts ball soldered and some parts diamond cut. Right now we are doing forming plating and it looks like gold. So is it possible that in PVD plating we can maintain same color? We also want to know PVD plating life. As we are getting 2nd hand plant available in india.

A. I would not recommend PVD directly on copper. The copper will tarnish even with the PVD coating, greatly limiting the life of the PVD finish. Suggest you consider first nickel electro-plating the copper, then plating with a thin layer of chromium. Same process for a brass substrate.

Jim Treglio - scwineryreview.com
PVD Consultant & Wine Lover - San Diego,
California
March 14, 2014

Common and responsible thickness of PVD plating on stainless steel jewellery

Q. Hello!

Currently I am concerned with the offer of a new potential supplier for stainless steel jewellery from China. They are offering a PVD plating with a thickness of 0.015 µm and I have the feeling that it is definitely too thin, especially for rings, because of the daily contact with water and soap.
As far as I know, and I am not an expert, but usually my other suppliers are offering a thickness between 0.02 and 0.07µm. So is it worth a try or absolutely dubious?

Many thanks for your feedback in advance,
Manuel

A. All of those thicknesses seem way to small. Have you moved a decimal point? Typical thicknesses for decorative PVD are ten times that value, and functional coating with high wear resistance are ten times the decorative PVD.

Jim Treglio - scwineryreview.com
PVD Consultant & Wine Lover - San Diego,
California
April 1, 2014

Q. Dear Jim,

Thanks for your helpful reply. My business is retail and therefore I am sadly only a greenhorn referring to the production process.
Nevertheless, I did my research in this matter and I am absolutely sure that I did not moved the decimal point. However, in the meantime I had some further change of information with that specific supplier and got some further information, of course.
At this point I would be very happy about another useful feedback here.

Back to their statement:
They mentioned that it is maybe a misunderstanding regarding the thickness. The thickness of 0,03-0,04 µm is only the thickness of the real gold plating and not the total thickness. They said that the total thickness, including the real gold plating and gold color plating should be 0,2 µm.

Is it reasonable and plausible?
Does PVD plating really contains two separate layers respectively two working stages?

Many thanks guys!

A. That makes sense. They deposit a base layer of a hard gold nitride, probably titanium nitride (TiN), and follow up with a thin sputter deposit of gold. The gold wears off fairly quickly, but if the wear is uniform no one will notice the change in color. Most decorative coating companies in the US have gotten away from the gold top layer, and in fact use ZrN with a little carbon rather than TiN so they can get the color closer to 24 kt gold.

Jim Treglio - scwineryreview.com
PVD Consultant & Wine Lover - San Diego,
California
April 7, 2014

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April 9, 2014

Thank you, Jim!

It sounds also reasonable for me in the first moment, but I don't have the background knowledge. So I'll give it a try, because everything else is entrepreneurial risk from now on.

Thanks again and greetings to California!

Manuel von Stauffenberg
- Berlin, Germany

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