Dent and Pits filling before Plating

A. Hi, Ashok.

I would suggest you not plate this stuff. Consider powder coating everything but the exhaust system, and have that ceramic coated. Otherwise, you could try polishing everything down until there are no pits. My feeling is that skilled shops are hit and miss on filling pits for electroplating, and it would be months of hands-on trial-and-error before you could achieve success at it. But, yes, solder, brazing, and for critical applications (like continuous molds) even welding, are employed for filling pits.

Regards,

A. If part thickness and time (cost) allow it, Ted's advise of polishing out pits is the right way to go. Otherwise, provided pits are very deep and localized, you may try argon welding and dressing back the surface. Alternatively, if pitting is distributed all over, a thick acid copper plating will give you a soft and dense surface you can polish prior to the final plate. Remember that ferrous substrates need an initial strike in a cyanide copper or other alkaline copper bath or a nickel strike.
G. Marrufo
Monterrey, Mexico

A. Hi Saeem. We appended your inquiry to a previous thread on the same subject. I do not believe that there is any satisfactory filler. I believe that you must solder, braze, weld, or mush buff copper to deal with pits and holes. Good luck.

Regards,