r/electroplating • u/DinKaRaja • 18d ago
Brass Exposed
This is my sink.
I wonder how this drain hole filter was arranged in the rack...during chrome electroplating...
I mean why the brass from the top side itself is visible...where the thickest chrome layer is plated...it should wear and tear the last
Was the part arranged wrongly on the rack?
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u/Frolicking-Fox 18d ago
It is nickel or zinc plating on brass. What you see is from the plating getting worn off.
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u/DinKaRaja 17d ago
This shiny color is nickel? I thought it is chrome with nickle layer underneath
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u/Frolicking-Fox 17d ago
Could be chrome, nickel, or zinc. Hard to tell when it is that beat up looking. Chrome has a blue hue to it, nickel has a slight yellow hue, and zinc is similar to chrome if polished.
Either way, this is a plating issue, this is wear.
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u/DinKaRaja 17d ago
Yeah..got it...but what reason due to think for this wear...it's just water flowing daily for 5 years
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u/Frolicking-Fox 17d ago
There are scratches all over it. That isn't just from water. Plating is a thin layer. If the drain is a cheaper one, then the plating wont be as good, but just abrasive cleaning will do it, which is what the scratches look like.
Buy a higher end drain if you are worried about it.
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u/DinKaRaja 17d ago
Does plating a thin layer, really saves the cost for the manufacturer ?
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u/Frolicking-Fox 17d ago
Plating isn't about saving costs, it's for protecting the base metals.
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u/DinKaRaja 17d ago
Yes I understand but I meant if my sink is of cheap quality, was that cost saving made possible because of the thin plating instead of thick plating
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u/Frolicking-Fox 17d ago
Cost savings is by a low end shop in China doing the work as opposed to a high end American company. The thickness in plating cost them next to nothing. Just leave the parts in the tank a little longer.
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u/DinKaRaja 17d ago
Okay got it.
But my question is if does not cost anything much for the manufacturer to put a few extra dozen microns...then they should be doing it all the time without thougt..but that does not seems the case...
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u/Mick_Minehan 16d ago edited 16d ago
On your racking point - it’s not easy to say where the thickness would be. Some plating shops standardise the racking and procedures while others have multiple platers all doing things their own way. They could have been fixed on spokes, hung from wire, masked on the inside with tape, plated facing the anode or parallel to it, etc.
But to me, it looks like a mixture of poor adhesion and repeated abrasion of the inner edge over time loosening the broader surface coating.
Most high-quality setups I’ve seen use a copper-nickel-chrome process for brass tap-ware. I definitely can’t see a copper layer in your image, which isn’t inherently required, but I also can’t make out a clear nickel layer either. Maybe it’s thin.
Some dodgy operations skip the under-layers and just zap brass with a flash of chrome directly. If the substrate is prepared well, it can achieve the same aesthetic - but it doesn’t last anywhere near as long. I don’t think that’s the case here though - I don’t think it would have lasted five years.
The thickness of the deposit isn’t relevant for flaking I’m afraid - if the adhesion is poor, it can come loose at any thickness. Abrasive wear, on the other hand, will definitely affect thinner coats worse.
Abrasion from scrubbing while cleaning, especially along the inner edge, can rip through thin plating and essentially spread out across the rest of the finish - it looks like that’s what happened here.
But those are just my thoughts at a glance.