Nickel Plating Process

Nickel Plating process is one type of electroplating process. Nickel Plating Process is the coating process with thin layers of nickel to protect from rust and the appearance is better.

Before the process of nickel plating, the material that you want to be plating must be prepared first.

Material must first be polished, so that a smooth surface material, and obtained a smooth layer of nickel. Polish process can be done with the manual polish, automatic polish, or electropolishing.

After Polish process, followed by washing process to remove rust, dirt,  oil, and grease. Rust can be removed using liquid hydrochloric acid (10 %) or sulfuric acid (5 %).

Dirt, oil, and grease can be removed with chemicals such as solvent cleaner, emulsifier cleaner, alkaline cleaner (soak cleaner), and alkaline electrocleaner (anodic-catodic process).

Before the process of Nickel Plating, The base material enter to acid dipping tank to remove the layer of oxide material and neutralize alkaline cleaner.

Chemicals used in  nickel plating:

-          Nickel Sulfate (280 – 330 gram/liters)

-          Nickel Chloride (50 – 60 gram/liters)

-          Boric Acid (40 – 45 gram/liters)

-          Additive Brightener

-          Wetting Agent

Operating conditions of the nickel plating process :

-          Temperature : 55 – 60 C

-          pH : 3,8 – 4,8

-          Stirred

-          Filtered

-          Anode : Electrolytic Nickel anode (Ni : 99.9%) wrap with anode bag.

After the nickel plating process can be resumed with chrome post plating treatment using aqueous sodium dichromate solution, and a little caustic soda, for the passivity layer of nickel. Nickel Plating process is usually followed by chrome plating process.