Finishing MetalOpen discussion on finishing sheet metal products. Feel free to share knowledge of a metal finishing products and or your own proven formulas.
I am in the process of starting a small business and one of the items I am making needs zinc plated…here are the specs: ASTM B-633 Type II Fe/Zn 12. After talking to a zinc plating company I learned that the materials used needed to be “Hot Rolled and Pickled & Oiled (HRPO) or “Cold Rolled steel”. The flat bar and sheet metal I am using are both HRPO but the expanded metal isn’t and every place I call to find HRPO or called rolled expanded metal act like I’m crazy. Everyone keeps telling me they only have hot rolled expanded metal and it is always clean with no rust. Does HRPO or cold rolled expanded metal exist or can the plating company really plate regular HR expanded metal.
The plating spec. does not limit the plater to the kind fo metal to plate on. The plater may choose not to plate on a particular, but that is only limited by talent, skill or capability. The type II calles out a colored chromate coating, the FeZn 12 tells you to plate 12 microns min wich is .00045".
i have 1000's of mild steel and expanded metal parts plated every year.
the zinc plating lasts for some time and our products
and they are abraided in the field with sand and gravel....
black or mild steel has more flex than C.R. and will cause the plating to fail over time.
Zinc Plating???
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