Hi Everyone
After being sent for plating, this kind of honeycomb pattern appeared on the outside of the lacquer. Has this happened to anyone? Although it is not very common, it happened once last year and once this year.
weird honeycomb pattern after plating
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weird honeycomb pattern after plating
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Aussie0zborn
- Posts: 1828
- Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:23 am
- Location: Australia
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Re: weird honeycomb pattern after plating
Does this same pattern show up on the stamper?
Re: weird honeycomb pattern after plating
yes show up on the stamper as well, only appear on the lead in area
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Aussie0zborn
- Posts: 1828
- Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 8:23 am
- Location: Australia
- Contact:
Re: weird honeycomb pattern after plating
Looks like “chicken feet” or “worms”. These usually show up in the lead-out groove area. It’s caused by organic impurities in the galvanic plating solution. A good carbon treatment will resolve that.
Re: weird honeycomb pattern after plating
In addition to the organic contaminants you might suspect as a matter of course, check for two other things:
- do you have the right proportions of silver nitrate to reducer in the silvering gun (often, when there is too little silver nitrate, such things happen, although these traces are then much thinner - like a spider's web). In your photo you can see a dull glow on the matrix - perhaps it is the result of the silvering itself and wrong proportions in the gun as well as insufficient preparation of the laquer surface before silvering (the laquer was not sufficiently washed with a brush)... or laquer was to fresh.
- try to set a more aggressive initial current ramp, e.g. start with 20A, and step up to 40A in 6 minutes. You can test other ramps, even more aggressive ones (our guys started at 40A and it was ok), experiment, it may work differently for you.
The above helped us and the problem practically disappeared, now it only appears on 10" laquers (probably different current density and here you would have to work on the current ramp itself).
- do you have the right proportions of silver nitrate to reducer in the silvering gun (often, when there is too little silver nitrate, such things happen, although these traces are then much thinner - like a spider's web). In your photo you can see a dull glow on the matrix - perhaps it is the result of the silvering itself and wrong proportions in the gun as well as insufficient preparation of the laquer surface before silvering (the laquer was not sufficiently washed with a brush)... or laquer was to fresh.
- try to set a more aggressive initial current ramp, e.g. start with 20A, and step up to 40A in 6 minutes. You can test other ramps, even more aggressive ones (our guys started at 40A and it was ok), experiment, it may work differently for you.
The above helped us and the problem practically disappeared, now it only appears on 10" laquers (probably different current density and here you would have to work on the current ramp itself).