Precision Plating Company, Inc. (PPC), Chicago, Illinois, has adopted a new
technology for high speed, high efficiency electroplating of continuously processed
flat rolled sheet metal in strip-coil form. PPC is a prominent plater in the
field of electronic materials. The company has long been recognized for its
leadership in developing and implementing state-of-the-art electroplating technology.
PPC has its own design, build and supply capability, which includes fabrication
of both polymer and metallic plating components. The company builds it own plating
machines and does fabricating work for others in the industry.
James G. Belmonti, chief executive officer of PPC, announced that
this recent technological development was made in partnership with
Electroplating
Technologies, Ltd. (ETL), an independent R&D company known
for its proprietary and patented ElectroJet® and HydroJetSM
technologies. Mr. Belmonti said, “ETL’s ElectroJet process
is a close proximity hydromechanical plating process, while HydroJet
is a close proximity hydrodynamic plating process. We were interested
in many of the features and benefits of each of these new technologies,
but felt that HydroJet was most suitable for electronic materials.
“We worked closely with ETL during the past eight months to refine the
mechanics of the process. We felt that the process would be well suited for
electronic materials, which have very tight specifications as required by electronics
hardware users. Plated components used for networking, computer hardware, telecommunications
system and automotive electronic control devices require almost perfect coating
profiles and surface quality.”
PPC worked with ETL to custom fit the HydroJet process and hardware to the company’s
plating machines. The process uses certain principles of fluid mechanics to
accomplish the replenishment of fresh electrolyte.
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State-of-the-art
plating lines are important, since the HydroJet system has
doubled the capacity of PPC's plating lines.
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The plating gap is only about 5mm between the soluble anodes
and the moving copper alloy strip. This requires constant
electrolyte flow with very specific
fluid mechanics in order to control coating profile and surface
quality of the plated product. ETL developed a means of injecting
high metallic ion-concentrated
electrolyte into the “plating gap” as it is plated, making it faster
and more efficient than conventional plating processes.
Fluid mechanics is also used in the process to strip away the “barrier”
layer associated with all electrochemical processes. A liquid cushion prevents
the coated strip from making inadvertent contact with the anodes and/or other
hardware in the plating cell.
“The results we have experienced with the process are outstanding,”
commented Mr. Belmonti. “We have essentially doubled the
capacity of our plating operations by using this technology.
This is a major step forward in
our constant effort to better satisfy our customer needs. We
have always prided ourselves on implementing the latest applicable
technology into our plating
machines to assure our ability to supply the highest quality
electroplated products to our customers.”
The expanded facility will enable PPC to expand its markets,
since it foresees numerous applications for both nickel plated
and tin plated strip products,
which makeup the backbone of electronic materials. “While downstream selective
plating operations are performed to apply precious metals such as gold, silver
and palladium, the bottleneck until now has always been the deposition rates
of the nickel and tin,” commented Mr. Belmonti.
“As we move into the new millennium, our customers can be
assured that PPC will always be looking for and refining new
technology to provide the highest quality plated strip materials to all our customers.”
