If you’re running components in a high-wear environment, electroless nickel plating heat treatment is an effective finishing process for industrial manufacturing. What can it do for your parts? Let’s take a closer look.
What is Electroless Nickel Plating Heat Treatment
Electroless nickel goes on without electrical current. It’s a chemical deposit, which means the coating builds evenly across the entire part whether it is threads, bores or blind holes. You will avoid dealing with edge buildup or thin spots the way you might with electroplating.
As soon as the process is complete, the coating will be a hardness at RC 48–52 on the Rockwell C scale. That is a hardness accepted for most applications. According to Metal Finishing (Elsevier Science), that baseline gives you meaningful abrasion and corrosion resistance without doing anything else to the part. For a lot of projects, this is a successful hardness.
But not all jobs are the same.
When You Need More
If your components are taking a beating because they are experiencing sliding contact, heavy abrasion, load cycling, deposited hardness of electroless nickel plating may fall short. That’s where electroless nickel heat treatment comes in.
Put the coating through a controlled thermal process and the hardness jumps to RC 68–70. That’s not a marginal improvement. With this type of hardness, you are now in the same hardness as hard chrome plating. What’s happening inside the heat treatment unit is the formation of nickel phosphide phases within the coating. This is a structural change driven by heat that locks in that hardness.
How EN-CHRO Plating Does It
EN-CHRO Plating runs a 750° Gas-Fired Walk-In Oven built for industrial-scale work, meaning anything from small to large components. It reaches 750°F internally and fits components up to 8 feet long. This means oversized parts that won’t fit in a standard oven aren’t a problem.
The oven handles two things: hardness enhancement and baking for adhesion. Hardness enhancement is exactly as it says. It hardens the exterior for long lasting wear. That second one matters more than people realize. High-strength steel can absorb hydrogen during the plating process. If you skip the bake, you risk hydrogen-induced cracking down the road. EN-CHRO Plating’s thermal process addresses both in one step.
What Does this All Mean?
Heat treating isn’t always necessary, but when you need it, heat treating can make all the difference. Remember, going from RC 52 to RC 70 is not a small gap. If your application involves serious wear conditions, specifying electroless nickel plating heat treatment from the start is the right call. Work with EN-CHRO Plating today at 708-450-1250. We have an oven right in our facility ready to go.