High Speed Nickel Plating On Difficult to Plate Metal (Aluminium)

Aluminium has been widely used in many field of application due to the low density, sensitive to corrosion, high mechanical strength and ease of fabrication. Plating of metal on aluminium is complex and difficult because aluminium always reacts with air to form oxide. It is difficult to obtain a good adhesive property on the aluminium surface. Thus, to plate metal on the aluminium, oxide layer must be eliminated by using an intermediate pre-treatment. However, this process involves several steps and even then the level of addition between the plated metal and the aluminium part is poor. The object of this project was to investigate the possibility of plating nickel directly on aluminium surface without any pre-treatment process, investigating the level adhesion between the deposited nickel and the aluminium base by high speed electroplating technique and also to investigate the effect of current density, temperature and different type of solution on weight of plated sample, thickness of plated sample and rate of deposition.