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-----Gold peel off over high phosphorus electroless nickel
Q. Hi After gold plating the components get failed during bend test. The Gold layer only come out. We are doing gold over electroless nickel high phosphorus. Process flow is given below
pre cleaning
soak cleaning
descaling
bright dip
hcl activation
sulphuric activation
acid copper plating .5 micron
sulphuric dip
electrolytic nickel .5 micron
rinse
electroless nickel 2 to 4 micron
rinse
electrolytic nickel 1 to 4 micron
hcl activation
gold plating .2 to .6 micron
drying
Please recommend any suitable activation if required ?
Please highlight any gap in the process flow?
employee - chennai
October 4, 2025
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A. Hi Vijayakumar.
Is this barrel plating or rack plating?
I remember an occasion where small, rather light parts were being gold plated on top of nickel plating and experienced poor adhesion. In that particular case the problem was very quickly solved simply by greatly slowing the barrel rotation speed. It had been quite rapid and the result was the parts were being swept upwards and then were fluttering down to such an extent that the nickel became passivated before some of the parts were reliably gold plated. Passivation of nickel can be quite rapid in a gold plating solution, so it might be more important to get the gold on quickly than to worry about how to activate the nickel. Activation may not even be needed.
Luck & Regards,
Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
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