What is Electroplating?
Electroplating is a process of coating a metal object with another metal, using electrical current passed through a chemical solution. It is the process that produces a thin metallic coating on the surface of another metal.
Why Use Electroplating?
The purpose of Electroplating is to improve appearance of the material, protection against corrosion and superior hardness and better wear resistance.
What is brush plating?
Brush plating is an electro-chemical process that uses systems to electroplate, anodize, and electro-polish localized areas on both OEM components and parts that need coating for repair and dimensional restoration.
Brush plating systems are portable. Unlike their tank counterparts, brush plating systems use very small volumes of solution and hand-held tools to apply the deposits and coating onto localized areas. These hand-held tools are covered with a absorbent material that is saturated with a solution and then brushed or rubbed against the part. Brush plating requires different hand-held tools for each different solution in the operation.
Electroplating with different metals
Platinum
Platinum is rare and very costly and is considered one of the most precious metals. Platinum electroplating is used to coat a premium protective finish over sterling silver and nickel base metal. Platinum's luster is very much purer than gold.
Rhodium
Rhodium is white in colour and a precious metal, of the platinum group. Rhodium is the hardest of all of the precious metals. Rhodium plating is widely used high voltage switch gear, silverware, silver models, medals, white gold jewellery and top end furniture fitting to prevent tarnishing / corrosion as well as due to its hardness it makes the surface scratch resistant.
Gold
Gold is unique for its yellow colour. It is a precious metal and does not oxidise in air, so its electrical conductivity stays uniform over long periods of time. It is ideally suited for electroplating applications. Gold plating offers good corrosion resistance, good solder-ability and when alloyed with cobalt, it has very good wear resistance.
Silver
Silver plating offers the highest electrical conductivity of all metals. It is a semiprecious metal that gets oxidise rapidly. Silver plating is best suited for engineering purposes, as for soldering, electrical contact characteristics, high electrical and thermal conductivity, thermo-compression bonding provides wear resistance to load-bearing surfaces.
Copper
Copper is the second most common metal plated, behind nickel. It provides a soft, red, ductile, solder-able surface. Copper is an excellent electrical conductor. However, it is not often used as a final plate, because it tarnishes easily. It makes an excellent undercoat for most other metal. In addition, because copper is ductile, it polishes easily to a high shine so it supports a bright, shiny finishing metal above it.