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Alkaline Zinc Barrel Plating -- Suggested current & time
Quickstart:
Zinc is the most commonly electrodeposited metal. Zinc plating can be done from acid based, cyanide based, or alkaline non-cyanide based process solutions.
Barrel plating is a method for plating parts in bulk rather than requiring the mounting of each item onto a plating rack.
Q. Plating load in 50 kg Barrel is 40 kg, and total area of the part is 390 dm.sq. To get minimum of 18 microns what is the current should be passed and time required to achieve this.
Kashi SridharJob processor - Bengaluru
July 17, 2025
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free pdf is currently available from academia.edu
A. Hi Kashi,
Such numbers are always empirical rather than based solely on theory, but 0.5 amp/sq decimeter is probably a fairly typical current density
⇦ huh? for barrel plating, which would calculate out to about 195 Amps, and in my experience 200 A is not untypical for a 40 kg load.
The time required depends on the thickness you seek, but the "Electrochemical Equivalents" chart
⇦ huh? in the Metal Finishing Guidebook ⇨
says 14.3 A-hr/sq ft to deposit 0.001" thickness, so if your current density is 0.5 A-dm2 or 5.38 A-ft2, you would deposit 0.001" thickness or 25 microns in 14.3/5.38 hours, or 160 minutes at 100% efficiency
⇦ huh?.
if you were a commodity plater rather than a spec plater you'd probably get about 3-1/2 to 4 microns thickness in a half hour of plating, but 18 microns thickness is an awful lot (severe duty is 12-13 microns) -- and will take probably take at least 2 hours. Barrel plating reduces handling cost compared to rack plating, but begins to get less practical when high plating thicknesses are required.
Please try to understand the background for these estimates so you can make appropriate adjustments to the figures.
Luck & Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
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