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| Solder resistant plating |
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| BradC:
--- Quote from: bitter_mike on June 01, 2020, 11:51:54 am ---Hi Brad, Nickel plating is actually not a bad choice here. Freshly plated nickel is wetted by solder, but over time, it forms a rather tenacious oxide layer and passivates. This makes solder not stick to it. It's the same reason most steels don't solder very well. I would go for electrolytic nickel as opposed to electroless nickel. Electroless nickel deposits an alloy of nickel and phosphorus which is harder and more corrosion resistant, but it also makes the passivation process slower. SeanB's suggestion about the phosphoric acid passivation will also work on nickel, though I am not sure how resistant to flux it will be. --- End quote --- I might have a go at it. The reason I was looking at electroless nickel is being able to effectively plate inside the hole. The only way I could see to properly electroplating the bore would be to thread a tiny electrode through the middle and I was having issues imagining how that might work. With electroless I can just push fluid through it to allow the plating to occur. I've started to think about things like heating the resulting product to 400 degrees and slowly pushing oxygen through the bore to accelerate building up an oxide layer, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, due to circumstances I'm now going to be 3,500KM away from my Lathe until November, so it's all theory up until then. |
| bitter_mike:
The thickness distribution of electroplating is, as you say, no where near as good as electroless, but as long as there's electrolyte in there, you'll get some nickel to deposit. Just plate at lower current for longer. There's also the fact that mixing up a respectable nickel electroplating bath only involves 3 ingredients, whereas an electroless nickel bath is a substantially more complicated beast. If you need some advice on it, do reach out. Electroplating is one of the few things about which I am qualified to speak. |
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