Description
Zinc iron plating was developed in the 1980’s in order to improve the appearance of black zinc plating. While successfully achieving this objective, it became apparent that the zinc iron process offered additional performance benefits including an increase in corrosion resistance. Upon learning this, manufactures began to request zinc iron clear as an alternative to zinc clear. While the zinc iron clear finish is not as blue/bright as its counterpart, the additional performance benefits made the finish worthwhile, especially for parts that would not be visible after assembly.
Zinc iron plating process takes advantage of some of the most recent plating advancements for depositing zinc alloy coatings from an alkaline electrolyte. Deposits typically contain 0.4-0.8% by weight iron and are extremely fine grained, very low stressed and burn free, even at unusually high current densities. Deposits from our zinc-iron plating are also uniformly bright and mesh perfectly with trivalent passivates.
Three additives are used with zinc iron plating to ensure maximum flexibility and versatility. These additives provide grain refinement, deposit brightness and determine the maximum limiting current density. They also have been specially synthesized to provide stability. These additives have been carefully selected to maintain the iron in a state so that it can be co-deposited, thereby creating an alloy coating and ensuring the proper iron concentration of the plating bath.
