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Poor electroless nickel plating appearance near threaded area

February 21, 2013

Q. Hi All! I'm having a problem on the appearance of our plated parts (electroless nickel plating); plating is usually outsourced.
There is a thin plating on the surface around the threaded area, these threads are masked With SST screw plugs. our plater claims that this is due to unremoved tapping oil on our machining process.
Our company can't afford a big amount to buy a washing machine for our parts since bulk of our products are made of plastics.
So can anyone give an advise on how to avoid this?
Or a good washing solution that can easily remove oils even in the blind threaded holes.

oil on threaded holes

Gio Unico
- Philippines

A. Hi Gio. If you succeeded in removing all traces of oil, the component would probably rust before it got to the plating shop -- so you would just have a new problem.

My suspicion, based on some similar experiences, is that the plating shop has the capability of easily removing the oil but does not want to bear the expense and environmental burden of disposing of your shop's oil. And as soon as a plating shop shows willingness to do so, the customer becomes more careless with oil drainage, shipping them ever more of their oil for disposal :-)

I think it's a simple matter of price negotiation, with the shop charging extra in proportion to the amount of oil on the parts when they receive them, and nothing more. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
February 24, 2013

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