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Get Your Desired Surface With Metal Plating And PTFE Plating

Posted On : Oct-25-2011 | seen (215) times | Article Word Count : 687 |

Plating refers to covering a metal surface with a layer of another metal or alloy that has some inherent desired properties like corrosion resistant, resistance to wear and tear, heat resistant, lustrous and smooth finish etc.
Plating refers to covering a metal surface with a layer of another metal or alloy that has some inherent desired properties like corrosion resistant, resistance to wear and tear, heat resistant, lustrous and smooth finish etc. Different types of metal plating include plating with gold, plating with silver, plating with chromium, plating with zinc, plating with rhodium, plating with composite materials, plating with Cadmium, plating with nickel, plating with copper, plating with alloys etc.

There are various methods used for plating. Coating non-metals with metals is called metallizing.

Electroplating

In electroplating, the metal to be coated is placed at cathode (negative electrode) and the coating metal is made as anode. The chemical solution taken contains the ions of the coating metal. On passing electric current the coating metal at anode goes into the solution and reappears at cathode as a covering layer.

Electroless plating

This method doesn’t involve passing electric current through electrodes. Plating is accomplished by several simultaneous reactions in an aqueous solution. The most common electroless plating is nickel plating.

Plating with Gold

This method involves encrusting a lean coating of gold over other substances, usually on copper and silver. Plating with Gold is widely employed in electronics to plate copper. Gold surface is more resistant to corrosion than copper and is also electrically conductive. Nickel is used as a barrier layer between inner copper and outer gold layer as copper atoms have propensity to disseminate through gold layer resulting in the surface getting discolored with an oxide/sulfide layer. Gold plated components are generally used in parts providing electric connection and in printed circuit-boards.

Gold plating is also used for plating different metals and glass for decorative purposes. The processes involved during gold plating are collectively known as gilding.

Plating with Silver

Plating with Silver is used as an economical substitute of gold on less challenging electrical applications. Although silver is better conductor than gold but it forms an oxide layer in due course and so gold layer is preferred for contacts. Silver plates are considered ideal for variable capacitors. Special care should be taken when used for parts in contact to high humidity conditions where there is risk that a crack on the silver plate may lead the inner copper to undergo rapid galvanic corrosion and coming off off the cover plate and revealing the copper. Silver plating has been used since long to cover metals to create cost effective version of those items that would have else been made of silver.

A thin layer of silver can also be deposited on several materials like glass by using Tollen’s reagent.

Plating with Rhodium

Plating with Rhodium is usually used to cover the off-white colors of white gold.

Plating with Chromium

This type of plating involves a concluding action performed by depositing a layer of chromium by electrolytic method. Chromium plating is commonly used to shield Nickel.

Plating with Zinc

Plating with Zinc is widely used in the manufacture of galvanized iron sheets. The outer zinc layer readily oxidizes to form zinc oxide which is quite hard and tough and prevents further oxidation of the inner layers.

Plating with Tin

Tin plating is widely used for preparing packing containers for food industry due to its non-toxic, ductile and corrosion resistant nature. It is widely used to plate and protect several ferrous as well as non ferrous exteriors.

Other types of plating

In addition to this many other metal platings like Nickel plating, Cadmium plating, alloy plating, composite plating etc. are used for various applications.

Talking of the non metal plating, the most widely used name is Teflon. The chemical name of Teflon is PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), a polymer containing carbon and fluorine. It was developed way back in 1938. PTFE is resistant to high temperatures, corrosion and chemical reactions. Also it is quite strong and durable. PTFE (Teflon) finds most wide spread use in manufacture of cooking utensils owing to its non stick nature. Nowadays many household articles are coming with Teflon coating.

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Get Your Desired Surface With Metal Plating And PTFE Plating_96312.aspx

Author Resource :
General Magnaplate is a well known name in the Plating industry creating coatings to offer superior properties to a wide range of materials. Known for delivering high quality finishes they provide plating solutions to almost anything. Visit their website at magnaplate.com

Keywords : Plating, PTFE, tin plating, ,

Category : Business : Business

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