How
small an area of precious metal can you plate?
For gold
and palladium/nickel, then mini - spot plating tools enable areas
as small as 0.5mm diameter to be very accurately deposited. This
maybe on the surface of connectors or semi-conductor devices or
plated "through" the stamped component, where for density
of packing the edge is used as the critical surface.
How
fast are components plated reel to reel?
Continuous
plating lines can be manufactured to plate at any speed, but obviously
the faster they run the longer the line and at some point this trend
is not economically viable. Most of our high volume lines plating
2 - 3 microns nickel, up to 1.5 microns gold and 3 - 4 microns tin/lead
will operate at up to 20 metres per minute.
Can
we use finishes other than gold for connectors?
Yes palladium
and palladium/nickel alloys are used very successfully - the popularity
of these finishes changes with the metal market prices of gold and
palladium.
Are
special plating tools expensive?
Yes - but
the precious metal savings on high volume parts means the tool is
paid for usually in 2 -3 months. It also means that by using the
latest technology your connectors will be the most competitively
priced.
How
many metals do you plate in one pass?
Our standard
high speed machines will plate five different metals - copper, low
stress sulphamate nickel, gold flash, selective heavy gold and selective
tin/leads.
