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Excess nickel plating build up on nuts

2005

Hello,

I work in a company that manufactures suspension assemblies for hard disc drives and during the plating operation, we have been seeing nickel build up on the nuts (we manufacture in the form of panels so they are loaded onto a plating rack and tightened with nuts before placing them in the plating bath) which causes plating variation. I was wondering if you could let me know the cause for nickel build up on the nuts and ways to minimize its occurance.

Thank you

Ravi Kommineni
hard disc drives - Minneapolis, Minnesota

Well lets see. The rack is negative so the nut is negative, like the part you are plating, so why in the world shouldn't it plate? To prevent plating, you could mask the outside of the nut or you could use a filled PVC nut which is not conductive.(not terribly strong, but decent)

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida
2005