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Ted Mooney, P.E. RET

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Imitation Cadmium plating turning cloudy white

Q. After removing my parts from my imitation Cadmium plating tank my parts look super ... but within 60 seconds my parts are turning cloudy white film on them.

Tried new brightener with no better results. Super clean my zinc. Plates, plating time same as usual 25 min. What can I do to stop this? pH is great at 6.4. Cleaning of parts has never changed, soaking parts in cleaner for 60 sec. At 150 degrees. Highly polished then plated. Just started happening.

My parts are small and usually at 1.3 volts. I went to a clear square bucket from my round 3 gallon bucket. Doubt if that's the issue.

2 gallon tank, ph at 6.0, temp. at 90, Glassbead parts, quick soak in mauriatic acid bath, dried, then polished with wire wheel to luster, 90% of parts off carbs are plated at 1.3 amps and .7 volts. Parts coming out super nice then 20 seconds of drying they are turning white haze. Never happened before. Whats going on? Richard Budney
- Weirton, West Virginia
April 16, 2025

A. Hi Richard.

I think it's very possible that your clear square bucket leached something into the plating solution. PVC, polypropylene, and polyethylene are suitable containers for plating solutions but some other plastics aren't (the recyling code, if present, may tell you what the container is made of). The previous contents of the clear square bucket might also be a problem.

Professional plating shops do a systematic pre-leaching of their plating tanks before putting them into service. And I have the personal experience of stupidly specifying a fire-resistant polypropylene tank, only to find that the borate fire retardant endlessly leached into the plating solution and the tank had to be replaced :-(

Hull Cells
hull_cell

on eBay or

Amazon

(affil links)

If you have a Hull Cell you could do some experiments you can learn from, but otherwise my first guess is that the square bucket was the problem ... unfortunately, fixing it is difficult. You could try hot carbon treatment of the plating solution to remove the contaminants but it's not easy and may not be worth it for 2 gallons of plating solution. Luck & Regards,

ted_yosem

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

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