Nickel Plating In Our Everyday Life

By Author: Corwin Smith
Total Articles: 12
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Nickel is a transition metal that is hard and ductile. It has a silvery-white color with a hint of golden in it. It is widely used in industries to protect, enhance the functionality and longevity of equipments and components owing to its corrosion resistant properties. Nickel is also commonly used in the chemical and food processing industries to prevent iron contamination.
It is a process whereby a coating of nickel is deposited to metal or other material. An advanced process is called electroless nickel plating is used to coat metallic and non-metallic materials, with an alloy of nickel-phosphorous or nickel-boron. The biggest benefit of electroless plating when compared to electroplating is that the coating on the material or item to be coated builds up at an even rate over the whole surface area. This happens immaterial to the angles, pivots, interior surface or exterior surfaces, whether the surface has dents or not, the whole surface is evenly plated. The only condition being that the surface needs to be conductive. Even non-conductive surfaces can also be plated with the use of appropriate pre-plate catalyst.
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... It is mostly done on surfaces to protect them from wear, resistance and corrosion. It is used in industries like engineering, automobile, food and chemical processing. It also has decorative uses in jewelry and home decor industry. Its use includes varied items like automobile parts, door knobs, bathroom fixtures, oil field valves, paper handling equipment, utensils, electrical tools, electronic circuits, etc. It is also used to coat and thicken machine and equipment parts and components that have been worn from use to salvage them. Its use in the automotive industry for wear resistance has increased significantly.
It renders certain desired properties to the surface that is coated. The properties that are rendered are varied and have many applications including prevention of ccorrosion, increasing strength and hardness, controlling lubricity, controlling emissivity and absorptivity, imparting reflective and magnetic property.
In our everyday life we see and use a lot of the applications of nickel plating. Bathroom fixtures that add sheen to our bathroom décor, door knobs, kitchen utensils that we use everyday for preparing the food, hardware used to enhance the aesthetics of our home décor, etc. it helps by coating the outer surface with a layer that is corrosion and wear resistant and also has a shiny finish. It is also used in jewelry, especially to add strength and lustre. In industry, it is widely used for coating different machine parts, salvaging overused parts, adding lubricity to certain parts, etc. this added properties help the machines to function properly and efficiently.
It is probably difficult to imagine industries, such as automobile, machinery parts, room fixtures, without nickel, since it offers great protection from corrosion. It has indeed become indispensable, providing protection and mirror-like shine on decorative applications in the different industries, including hardware, plumbing, automotive, appliance.
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