Need lab SOPs for electroplating shop

A. Hi Sandeep.
If you are using a proprietary system from a plating process supplier, technical data sheets will be available for each step, and they are an outstanding starting point for your SOPs.

If you are not using proprietaries for a particular step, it seems to me that there are 3 possible approaches ...

• The first would be to retain a finishing consultant who already understands exactly what you need and can pull together a plan quickly.
• The second approach would be to try to take advantage of some service where much of what you need will be "prepackaged". Plating shop software vendors (adv.: for example, Anoplex Software [a finishing.com supporting advertiser]) may be able to offer systems with much of the info you will require already available.
• The third approach would be to start from scratch. That \may take many months of work, possibly a year or more. I would suggest starting by downloading a copy of The Metal Finishing Guidebook, which includes references to a lot of specifications, etc. Then get appropriate plating standards for zinc plating and zinc nickel plating from ASTM, AMS, or ISO. Once you know what you must comply with, you will have a good idea what kind of lab tests must be run for compliance as well as general control.

You can search this site for "analysis" or "titration" plus "cleaner" or "picking" to read a good deal about such tests.

Luck & Regards,


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