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Stripping Nickel From Kovar

Quickstart:
     It may be necessary to strip plating from the substrate for a number of reasons: rejected plating, wrong plating accidentally applied, experiments, etc. It is generally relatively easy to chemically or electrochemically strip a plating from the substrate if the composition of the two metals differ widely from each other, but ...
     Stripping solutions are not mind readers. When the plating and the substrate are very similar materials, the stripper doesn't "know" what you want stripped and don't want stripped, so it becomes more difficult.
     Kovar is a nickel-rich, cobalt-rich, alloy often used in glass to metal seals because it is both corrosion resistant and offers a thermal expansion coefficient similar to glass.

Q. We've nickel plated some Kovar shields that for whatever reason the customer wants stripped. As Kovar is a high nickel rich alloy, what's the best approach for removing the nickel without etching the Kovar substrate?

Milt Stevenson, Jr.
Plating shop technical manager - Syracuse, New York
July 24, 2025

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