Electroplating on aluminum requires special pre-treatment due to the special properties of aluminum. These pre-treatments need to be adjusted due to different aluminum materials and different parts. It is not easy to follow the general process. Therefore, for those who are engaged in plating on aluminum, it is sometimes necessary to perform a pre-plating test on aluminum.
To carry out this test, the first is the selection of the pretreatment process and the design of the improved method. The pre-plating treatment on aluminum includes four important processes such as degreasing, acid etching, electroless or displacement plating, and pre-plating. The most important of these is electroless plating or displacement plating. Therefore, the tests that are often done are concentrated on this process. Of course, different aluminum materials and different processing methods have different requirements for pretreatment. For example, the pretreatment of aluminum die casting parts and rolled aluminum parts is very different, and even if the same processing method, different aluminum materials are different. The pre-treatment process, such as the amount of copper in aluminum, directly affects the adhesion of the coating.
The test of the pre-treatment scheme for plating on aluminum is also a systematic comparison test, requiring different selected pre-treatment processes for the sample, followed by the same electroplating process, and then testing its adhesion. The point of this comparative test is to ensure that, except for differential process points, the other processes are all identical conditions, otherwise there is no comparability and no evaluation can be made.
