Surface Treatment Technology of Mold Electroplating at Home and Abroad

Surface Treatment Technology of Mold Electroplating at Home and Abroad

More and more foreign-funded enterprises see the growing Chinese mold market, have entered the Chinese mold market, many internationally renowned automotive mold, stamping die, injection mold enterprises have also entered China, and enter the Chinese market with a very rapid force and speed.

With the development of die industry, the requirement of die performance is more and more stringent, and the problem of life is becoming more and more prominent. The life of the die can be increased several times or even tens of times by adopting different surface strengthening treatment processes. Surface treatment technology is very important to the die and mould industry. In recent years, great progress has been made in surface treatment technology abroad. It is helpful for the development of our die and mould industry to learn about the situation abroad for reference. Next, I will share with you two plating processes used in foreign moulds.

1. Electroless Nickel-Phosphorus Alloy Plating on Dies

The plastic parts widely used in automobile instrument, electrician and household appliances industry also put forward higher requirements for injection moulds. Surface technology is widely used abroad, especially electroless nickel plating technology, which is particularly prominent in the research and application of improving the comprehensive performance and life of dies. The advantages of wear resistant electroless nickel plating are as follows: low treatment temperature (85-95) degree; deposit thickness control accuracy within (+2 micron); compressive stress, low stress; excellent demoulding performance. Electroless plating of nickel-phosphorus alloy and adding phosphorus can ensure that the hardness of the coating can be increased to 1100 HV after heat treatment. Manufacturing tools, such as drills, reamers, concave dies, punching tools and pressing dies, etc. With this electroless plating method, the thickness of the coating does not exceed 10 microns.

2. Anti-wear Composite Coating for Die Electroplating

Composite plating is a process of electroplating or electroless plating, in which insoluble organic and inorganic solid particles are added to the solution to co-deposit with the base metal to form a composite coating. The matrix metals of wear-resistant composite plating are nickel, copper, cobalt, chromium and some alloys, and electroless nickel-phosphorus alloy plating can also be used. The dispersants used are hard solid particles such as oxides, carbides, borides, nitrides and diamonds. This kind of coating not only has high hardness, good wear resistance, can reduce the wear of friction parts, but also has good high temperature resistance, so it is called "cermet".

The composite coatings still have excellent wear resistance and exhibit excellent adhesion and wear resistance at 400 C. Urane rubber mold is treated by nickel coating containing 15% Vol graphite fluoride particles, and no release agent is used. The mold treated by this method is effective in the forming of engineering plastics with high forming temperature.

Mould production is increasingly dependent on high-tech, high-end surface treatment technology. The gap between China's mould industry and the world's advanced level is a great pressure. Facing the trend of world economic integration, if we can not reach the level of mould technology of international enterprises, we may also have a weak foothold in the domestic market. If China's die and mould factories do not learn from the world's most advanced die and mould technology, can they survive?