Optimize Your Plating Operations with Plating International Inc.
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Introducing our New Chrome Plating Rectifiers featuring Pole Reverse Technology, now available for rapid delivery in as little as 2–3 weeks!
Why Choose Plating International?
???? Fast-Track Your Projects: Our streamlined process ensures you receive your high-performance rectifier in record time, minimizing downtime and maximizing efficiency.
???? Advanced Technology: Powered by Flex Kraft switch mode technology, our rectifiers deliver unmatched reliability, ensuring consistent and superior plating results.
???? Modular Flexibility: Tailor your setup to your exact needs with our stackable and customizable units, designed for seamless expansion as your business grows.
⚙️ Maintenance-Free Operation: Enjoy virtually maintenance-free performance, allowing you to focus on what truly matters—your production.
???? Precision Performance: Experience less than 1% ripple across any output, eliminating the need for ripple filters and enhancing your plating quality.
Turnkey Installations Available!
Let us handle the installation process from start to finish, ensuring your new system is up and running without a hitch.
Copper bussing is crucial in chrome plating applications due to several reasons related to its role in the electroplating process: Don’t forget to visit our rectifier page.
High Electrical Conductivity: Copper has excellent electrical conductivity, which is essential for uniformly distributing the electrical current across the surface of the part being plated. This ensures consistent deposition of the chromium layer.
Reduced Voltage Drop: Copper’s low resistance minimizes voltage drops, allowing for efficient energy use and more precise control over the plating process.
Even Plating: Proper bussing ensures that the electrical current is distributed evenly across all parts of the surface. This is critical for achieving a uniform chrome layer, avoiding thin spots or uneven coating that could lead to defects in the finished product.
Mechanical Strength: Copper bussing is robust and can handle the mechanical stresses of the plating process, including the weight of the parts and the force required to maintain good electrical contact.
Corrosion Resistance: Copper is relatively resistant to corrosion in the environment of the plating bath, which helps maintain consistent performance over time.
Efficient Heat Dissipation: During the plating process, heat is generated due to the flow of current. Copper’s excellent thermal conductivity helps dissipate this heat, preventing overheating and potential damage to both the equipment and the workpiece.
Material Availability and Cost: Copper is relatively cost-effective compared to other highly conductive materials like silver or gold, making it a practical choice for large-scale industrial applications.
In summary, copper bussing is essential for ensuring a reliable, efficient, and high-quality chrome plating process. Its electrical and thermal properties, along with its durability, make it the preferred choice for this application.
Plating International custom tank liners and secondary containment are the heroes behind the scenes!Our custom tank liners and secondary containment are the heroes behind the scenes. Crafted with precision, these liners are tailored for each application, ensuring a perfect fit and unmatched protection against corrosive chemicals. It's innovation meeting necessity.
But it's not just about keeping your tanks safe. Our commitment to the environment is unwavering, with secondary containment solutions that guard against chemical seepage. Your peace of mind is our priority, ensuring compliance with EPA regulations effortlessly.
Our experienced team handles even the most complex setups with ease. And when it's time for a change, we're there to make the transition smooth, minimizing downtime and keeping your operations running without a hitch.
Electroless Nickel Plating Best Practices: How to rinse and remove parts from an EN PTFE bathThe power of Single Component #ElectressNickel
-Plug and play ✅
-Brightness ✅
-Hooked ✅
Drop in solution for existing plating shop tanks and processes, making the transition from 3 component smooth and hassle free.
Make up and replenish from the same drum or tote.
A bath make is the same price as One Metal Turnover (MTO)
Below is the proper way to passivate a stainless steel tank for Electroless Nickel Plating to share with your team!
One-Plate® Single Component Electroless Nickel Plating RatesBelow are the One-Plate® Plating Rates for Mid-Phos, High-Phos, and Low-Phos.
PII'S Guide to Pretreatment for Electroless NickelPlating is only part of the process. In order to ensure that your parts are plated to the best quality, follow Plating International, Inc.’s Guide to Pretreatment for Electroless Nickel!
No hypo surcharges or nickel adders for One-Plate Single Component Electroless NickelNo hypo surcharges or nickel adders for One-Plate Single Component Electroless Nickel.
Making the switch to One Plate - Single Component Electroless NickelClick below to learn why electroless nickel platers like Bob are making the switch to One Plate - Single Component Electroless Nickel.
Electroless Nickel Plating Tanks from Plating InternationalHaving your Electroless nickel tank properly designed and built is critical to having a sustainable EN operation. Poly/Co poly or Stainless Steel will work best.
Polypropylene Natural, stress-relieved polypropylene is well regarded for tank construction, as it is inert to plating solutions. Tanks are easily fabricated, and when using proper nitrogen welding techniques, are fairly reliable. The relative low cost and versatility of design considerations make polypropylene the most widely used material of construction for electroless nickel tanks.
Stainless steel tanks have infinite life spans. Electroless nickel, however, will plate onto the stainless steel tank walls, and these tanks may prove expensive to operate because of periodic plate out, which necessitates downtime for tank stripping and clean-up. Satisfactory operation has been sustained using well-stabilized electroless nickel solutions with one or more of the following techniques: Chemical Passivation, Applied Anodic current to take during operation, & Bag liners
Copper bussing install on Flex Kraft Switch mode rectifiers for Hard Chrome PlatingDo you know about Flex Kraft switch mode rectifiers for hard chrome plating? Click the link below to learn more about making the switch to a switch mode Flex Kraft unit. Plating International also offers installation of the copper bussing for your rectifier directly connected to your plating tanks.
Contact us today.
20 Questions with Matthew Pankow. Founder & President of Plating International, Inc.https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/642-20-questions-with-matthew-pankow-plating-international
Cathodes and Anodes in the chrome plating process (Part 2)Watch our video below to learn more about cathodes and anodes
As soon as an electroplating shop mentions new or upgraded lines to Renny Fritz, that is when the questions start pouring out of him.
“Why are they looking for a new line?” Fritz says. “Are they currently doing the process now? Are they looking to bring it in a house? I have to understand their expectations, because there's a lot of factors you have to consider.”
Fritz, who recently became a Technical Sales Specialist at Carlisle Fluid Technologies, but for years was the Application Sales Manager at Koch Jessup Systems, a division of George Koch Sons. He got his start as a welder at Jessup in , and has spent the better part of his 33 years in the business helping build or upgrade systems for finishers across the U.S.
When he begins a conversation with a finishing shop on either installing a new line or upgrading an existing one, Fritz almost becomes a pseudo-psychologist to get inside the thinking process of the customer.
“A lot of shops have an idea of what they want, but I have to ask ‘why’ are they looking to do it?” he says. “Most are doing it because they are looking for efficiency, repeatability, and all the things that address automation. Basically, you need to understand what they're seeking for throughput.”
For some shops, the reasons to expand their operations and add finishing lines are to meet growing customer demand. For others, it is maybe refurbishing and upgrading their existing line to change out motors and hoists to get improved efficiencies out of lines that could be two to three decades old.
Either way, getting a design and installation done correctly — with proper automation and controls — is imperative to a long lasting process line that will hold up to future demands.
“If you are designing a plating or conversion coating process line, you need to make the most of the opportunity,” says Venkat Raja, President and Founder of Advint in Ontario, Canada, which advises surface finishing companies
“A well-designed plating process line in most cases would only require about 20% changes to its features in the operations phase in the long term,” he says. “In reality, the required changes in the operations phase are seldom lesser than 20%. And these changes are expensive, time-consuming, and in most cases the problem and the positive benefits are unknown.”
And after turmoil during the pandemic a few years ago, shops are seeing an explosion of new business in the coming years.
Expansion has been the case in Brillion, Wisconsin for Professional Plating, which is undergoing $9.5 million expansion project on add a pair of new finishing lines. The company will invest over $4 million in a new zinc barrel line that will be online by the end of , the second zinc barrel line that will be operational in their facility.
Professional Plating is also spending $5.3 million on a new epoxy electrocoat line to replace its present equipment. That equipment is planned to be operational in July .
General Manager Larry Dietz says the company spent $4.3 million on a new zinc plating line that was christened in , and they also had line expansions in and again in . Over the past decade, Professional Plating’s owners have invested nearly $20 million in adding lines, upgrading facilities for its team members, and investing in technology and software.
The company is the world’s best Automatic Plating Line supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
Surprisingly, Dietz says there is no master plan that they are working from.
“You work with your installer and they are going to give you suggestions, then internally you probably put tape on the floor and do all kinds of things in different configurations to figure out which way the floor works best."
“We don't honestly have a long-term capital plan,” Dietz says. “Because we are a job shop, it really depends on customers a lot of times, and there is gut feeling when we add more equipment.”
For example, Professional Plating added 60,000 square feet of new space in at the height of a recession, but felt they needed the additional capacity and wanted to bring work they were sending out back inside. That line quickly filled in a short time, which had them adding more space soon thereafter. They added another 60,000 square feet in , and that line was running at capacity quickly.
Kerry Behnke, Pro Plating’s Zinc Business Team Manager, says they have two trains of thought when looking at expansion or upgrades: whether you have new space to build a line, or if you need to retrofit an existing facility.
“We were fortunate enough in when we started one of the larger rack lines that we had expanded the building,” Behnke says. “We started from a blank space, and we knew what that space was size-wise and how the machine would fit in there. That's a pretty simple thing to do.”
Where it takes a little bit more planning, she says, is when you are replacing a line that was decommissioned a few years ago, and now you have to fit it in that existing space.
“That becomes a little bit more complicated,” Behnke says. “You work with your installer and they are going to give you suggestions, then internally you probably put tape on the floor and do all kinds of things in different configurations to figure out which way the floor works best. But you would never make any of those decisions all by yourself. You still need the Kochs of the world to come in and say, ‘Yep, you have enough floor to roof space, and you have enough back and forth space.’ You need their input just as much about how it's going to work.”
Fritz says planning as far ahead as possible will make the design and installation of new equipment — as well as retrofits — come out as smoothly as possible. For one, it make take close to a year to get a project completed from concept the commissioning, where pre-pandemic it was half of that.
“We are probably right around 11 months,” he says. “And that's not because I can't build equipment; it's because I can't get some control devices that are out there, such as your PLCs and your control modules.”
One of the first questions that Fritz asks: is this a new process to the shop, or has the facility performed this type of operation before? And over the past few years, he says the work that they have been performing has been split evenly in new lines and refurbishing existing processes with newer equipment and systems.
“It's usually a capacity issue, where they are taking on additional work so they need that capacity,” Fritz says. “The line us old, and it doesn't have all the advanced features today. It was probably a line that was built and they wish they would have done it right the first time.”
Chicago’s Saporito Finishing has invested heavily in newer, more automated equipment to help alleviate the reliance on its workforce. In , it commissioned its refurbished automatic zinc rack plating line that now features newer PLC controls and a programable computer HMI interface to allow for a wide variety of cycles to support a vast array of finishing recipes.
Saporito President Jeff Logan says the computer system also records process information and exports the data to a database that can be reviewed anytime, anywhere, providing objective process parameter documentation in real time.
Logan says the line capacity was upgraded to 1,150 pounds, allowing for zinc plating of very heavy parts. The overall project came in at just under $1,000,000, but the results of the capital project include improvements in quality, repeatability, reliability, and turnaround; reduced downtime for repairs and maintenance; increased capacity to support the growth of our customers.
“Several additional tanks were added to the line extending the footprint to over 100 feet,” Logan says, adding that work bars, racks, and saddles were all redesigned and upgraded to provide greater uniformity across the entire load package reducing variation in coating thickness while improving overall plating quality.
Upgrades were also made on the hoists to safeguard customer hardware, including an ultrasonic carrier detection system that prevents line crashes, enhancing the protection of customer parts in the process.
The design of a new line or upgrade usually takes about 30% of the one-year time frame as engineers look at what needs to go into the space, and then must figure out how to make it fit and work properly. Many design and install companies now use 2D and 3D computerized software to help lay out the lines, and to show shop owners how it will all work.
Fritz says there are many contingencies that go into designing the footprint.
“What really decides what your footprint is going to be basically is the work envelope and the size,” he says. “It’s the size of the whole machine based on the process, as well as other devices such as ventilation, wastewater treatment, RO or DI water. You need areas for rectifier, and then you need your chemical metering. It’s a lot of components.”
“Predicting a production capability on most lines on a long term, particularly for a job shop, is tough.”
Raja says on a metal finishing processing line, choosing a rectifier with correct technical specifications and capacity based on production capability is very important.
“Predicting a production capability on most lines on a long term, particularly for a job shop, is tough,” Raja says. “However, a correct choice on the capacity of a rectifier and on technical specifications will turn errors to account on a process performance.”
Wastewater treatment system usually come in standard designs such as 30-feet by 50-feet of floorspace, but sometimes the area it is going in – or lack thereof — might require some additional engineering.
“You can be creative with wastewater,” Fritz says. “Maybe you make it skinny and long and maybe it's not as tall but it's short and has a couple more vessels. You can be very creative in the wastewater treatment.”
Once a footprint for the line and accessory needs — ventilation, wastewater, rectifiers — is worked out, there are other considerations that must be engineered on paper and computer first before installation begins. There needs to be space for chemical totes and other items, but more importantly there needs to be a design system in place for how the line will be fed parts and also how parts will be pulled from the line.
“There needs to be an understanding of how you're going to feed the line, and how is the work coming and exiting the machine,” Fritz says. “When you design the machine, are we loading and loading from one end? Are we loading it one end and exit it out the other, which I find that a lot in Mexico. It depends on your plan, and you can do either. Usually it makes more production sense for operators to have it on one end, but it's not that case for everyone.”
The biggest changes that have affected designing and installing new lines is the advancements in the control systems that better automate the line processes, such as a programmable logic controller, or PLC.
No one knows that more than Navya Venkateshaiah, PhD., who wrote her thesis in for a graduate degree at the University of Wolverhampton on “Electroplating Process Plant Automation and Management Using Emerging Automation and Communications Technologies.”
Venkateshaiah says maintenance of the optimum condition of the electroplating process solution is vital to achieving good product quality and meeting production schedules.
“However, this is a complex task requiring real-time monitoring and control of numerous tanks and process stages and operations on the production line in an electroplating plant,” she says.
For example, Venkateshaiah says monitoring and control of the hoist system are vital, and computerization provides real-time information about the sensors which are located to stop at the right position. In doing her research for her doctorate, Venkateshaiah says many shops have not adequately automated their systems, which is why many need to either upgrade and refurbish their lines, or tear out and build new ones.
“The electroplating process industry is currently facing some challenging process control problems in their production plant due to an insufficient level of automation being applied in the industry,” she says. “The control is largely manual, and the monitoring of both plant and processes is ad hoc.”
Venkateshaiah says she discovered that many other variables such as solution density, ions concentration, and current supplied to the plating solutions are not always monitored and controlled.
“It is vital to maintain all the solution parameters to the required range,” she says. “Even slight changes in any of the parameters can result in the rejection of the plated product.”
Fritz says that many in the industry have been using PLC to control variable frequency drive (VFD) for motor speed control for several years, but that because of the nature of the electroplating industry, some are skeptical to place too many automation devices tankside.
“The automation has pretty much stayed the same with control technology, and we are using new things here and there,” he says. “But we are very skeptical and we don't jump right into new things because this is a corrosive industry, and it can be hard on components and equipment.”
As an example, many shops who are adding new lines or doing major upgrades are locations some rectifiers and controls in completely separate rooms in order to avoid corrosion from denigrating the equipment so quickly.
Some shops who are adding or refurbishing lines are able to determine very quickly how much the new system will pay for itself in better throughput, improved quality, and fewer rejects.
Jaime Maliszewski of Reliable Plating Works and Elite Finishing in Milwaukee spent $600,000 renovated a plating line in , adding new hoists, motors, and software to the line first installed in the early s.
But Maliszewski had already done the math before the first bolt was turned, and knew the updated line will give them 20% more throughput and pay for itself in a year or so.
“We want it to have more advanced systems to increase efficiency, and actually speed up the line a little bit, too,” Maliszewski says. “The breakdowns were happening more often, and we were making a lot of hand moves for new customers and new processes. We had to make some adjustments since the automation couldn’t handle it.”
More importantly, Maliszewski says the line will go from processing 10 bars an hour now to 12 bars an hour on this machine, a 20% increase in throughput.
“There’s a lot of things that were no-brainers for us,” he says. “It’s going to pay for itself in less than a year, probably.
Jeff Dellach, General Manager for Jessup Systems at Koch Finishing Systems, says that many shops have some form of automation on their lines but still should be modernized.
“They have controls that rely on limit switches for positioning and for the transfer, and a lot of two-speed motor applications where it has maximum velocities,” Dellach says. “But you’re tapped out, and you can’t go any faster.”
The new line has variable-frequency drive single-speed motors that he says generally cost the same as a two-speed, but the operator can get much better performance.
While tank immersion times are a big factor in what types of throughput improvements can be made, Dellach says they can make up time and improve cycles with better VFD controls.
“Whether it’s one, two, or three loads, every additional load per hour adds up,” he says. “And at the end of the week, it’s good money. When the light bulb goes on in our customer’s minds, and they realize, ‘Okay, yeah, maybe I’m spending more than I thought I would do this upgrade,’ that payback is there because they’re able to get more loads through with that equipment.”
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