Summary for lab sops for electroplating shop Discussion
lab SOPs for electroplating shop are the focus here: Sandeep Jangam says he has joined a shop doing acid zinc barrel plating, alkaline zinc jig plating, and zinc nickel plating in barrel and jig, but the testing lab has no SOPs. He also asks what parameters should be checked for an alkaline degreasing tank and for pickling tanks. No technical testing procedure is actually provided in the thread excerpt. Instead, Ted Mooney, P.E. notes that such information is usually available on AbeBooks, implying the user may need to consult published references or standard texts for lab procedures and bath control methods. The exchange is therefore more of a pointer to outside resources than a detailed answer, and it does not list specific SOP parameters for the tanks mentioned.
Q. Recently I joined an electroplating shop where acid zinc barrel plating, alkaline zinc jig plating, and zinc nickel plating in barrel and jig is carried out.
My problem is this shop does not have SOPs at testing lab. And also I don’t know which parameters are tested for “degreasing tank” (alkaline type degreaser used), or pickling tank parameters.
Can anyone help me, any standard SOP of testing?
Sandeep Jangam
Employee – Pune, India
February 16, 2024
Usually available on
eBay; sometimes on AbeBooks
or
Amazon
free pdf is currently available from academia.edu
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 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
Need quick confidential answers? $25
Need project assistance? $100/hr.