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Strip Brass Plating from low carbon steel substrate (rivets)?

November 1, 2013

Q. Hello everyone. I had an outside electroplater accidentally put 200 microinch of brass plating on the wrong steel rivet batch. Is there a commodity chemical (acid, ammonia ⇦ on eBay or Amazon [affil link] , etc?) sufficient to remove the brass from steel? We zinc plate in-house, but we do not plate brass. So I do have the ability to strip this batch on my own. Thank you everyone.

Clay O'Shell
Plating shop - Tyrone, Pennsylvania, USA

November 15, 2013

A. Hi Clay,

Try this.
Ammonia Persulphate 75 g/l
Ammonia 375 ml/l
Temperature 21 ~ 29 deg C

or

Sodium cyanide 90 g/l
sodium hydroxide [affil link] 15 g/l
room temperature
Steel Cathode, the rivets anodic , 2V
( Beware, high voltages may etch the steel )

Good Luck.

SK Cheah
- Penang, Malaysia

A. Clay,

I second persulphate. We've been selling a persulphate-based copper stripper for years. citric acid will strip the zinc also, but it will attack the steel too so be careful if you use it.

Ray Kremer
Stellar Solutions, Inc.

McHenry, Illinois

November 20, 2013

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