What Is Barrel Nickel Plating? What Type Of Plating Is Most Commonly Used?

What Is Barrel Nickel Plating? What Type Of Plating Is Most Commonly Used?

Metal plating is one of those silent players in a game who may not be profoundly praised, but their absence leaves the team weak. In the metal stamping world, electroplating and electroless plating are two of the most used metal plating techniques. It plays a crucial role in the metal stamping process, as it creates a protective and decorative coat over the finished metal parts.

It ensures the longevity of the metal parts by improving their resistance to wear and corrosion. In some cases, it is intentionally used to alter the metallurgical properties of the finished metal part.

What Is The Electroless Plating Process?

An electroless plating process is similar to electroplating and uses two electrodes and a dielectric solution. One of the electrodes is the metal to be plated, while the other is the metal that is used to coat the other electrode. The dielectric solution acts as a catalyst and helps the metal to create a protective layer to the metal part.

Electroless plating versus Electroplating process What makes electroless plating different from electroplating is that, the former, does not require external electric circuitry to complete the action, unlike the latter. Manufacturers use this plating technique to coat metal parts with diverse sizes and shapes.

Electroless plating is among manufacturers as it improves metal durability, solderability, and reflectivity. Since it does not require any external power and plating baths, the overall operational costs are lower than the electroplating process.

What is Barrel Nickel Plating?

Barrel Nickel plating is a metal plating process that uses Nickel as one of its electrodes to coat the metal piece. Nickel is the most used metal plating material because it can endure the chemical reactions that instigate the electroless/electroplating process.

In a barrel Nickel plating set up, a barrel with lots of metal parts that need nickel plating. The barrel is moved and rotated such that the metal parts collide with each other to create bipolar contact between metal pieces.

The result is that the metal parts get a bright and corrosion-resistant appearance. This process gives a chrome-like finish to small to medium-sized metal parts of complex geometry. Therefore, the best metal stamping companies also offer the best barrel plating services.

Advantages of Barrel Plating Services What makes barrel nickel plating one of the most popular metal stamping coating technique is the unique advantages it has to offer: 1. A single barrel can hold large quantities of metal parts The size of the barrels decides the number of metal parts it can hold. The single barrel also can handle operations such as cleaning, rinsing, sealing, and plating. It means you can avoid extra costs as you need not use multiple types of equipment for each of the operations.

2. All metal parts are uniformly coated Barrel nickel plating involves a large barrel with as many pieces of metal parts as possible and is dipped into an electrolytic solution together and rotated simultaneously all the metal pieces are uniformly coated, including those with complex geometries.

3. Cost-effective Metal plating method Barrel nickel plating is one of the most common metal plating process preferred by manufacturers because the costs to carry out the process is lesser when compared to other plating processes like racking plating. It does not require any additional equipment like a part carrier or agitation equipment.

4. Can be fully automated As modern technology advances to automation in every industrial process, this plating process can be set up to be fully automatic. Most of the plating service providers are already leveraging the power of automation. In this setup, an operator usually is a robotic arm that streamlines each of the steps included in the barrel nickel plating process.

Conclusion Metal plating is a crucial step in the metal stamping process and gives the perfect finish to the product. It improves the corrosion resistance, hardens the surface, and creates a shield against radiation on the surface of the metal parts. Barrel plating services use barrel nickel plating process to give a shiny and perfect chrome-finish to small and medium-sized precision metal

parts. It, however, can not be used for heavy, large, and highly complex metal parts. In such cases, manufacturers prefer the rack plating services.

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