Measuring plate thickness

[AresP]

Gents,

does anyone have a suggestion as to a way to measure plate thickness ?

Regards

Ares

[lloyd]

Ares. If you are hanging your parts on copper wire you can use a micrometer to measure the unplated part of the wire and then check the part of the wire that gets plated, the difference will be the thickness of the plate. Thats the way I do it. Works good for me. lloyd

[AresP]

Lloyd, thanks for your reply. We are exclusively doing brush plating so measuring the copper wire is not an option at this stage. Good idea though.

So far, we are assuming an anode efficiency of approx 90% and we deduce the plate thickness according to the time spent plating; not a very accurate method unfortunately. Although with this method we are pretty certain that we achieve at least a certain thickness, we are not exactly sure as to how much.

Regards,

Ares

[dagobert]

At the risk of seeming too easy, why not use a caliper of some osrt to measure the before and after thickness of an edge or corner piece of the part itself?

[mcaswell]

Using an immersion plating system, at the recommended amps per sq inch, temp etc. most of our systems will plate at 1/1000" per hour. So, the time element will give you a fair idea of thickness without measurement.
Alternatively, a micrometer reading before and after is ideal.

As for measuring brush plating, - thats very hit and miss! By it's nature, brush plating will simply not give you an even thickness, too many variables. How can you control an even accurate brush stroke over an entire area? Impossible.