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PRODUCTS FINISHING — pfonline.com 23 CORROSION AND SALT SPRAY KC Jones Plating Co. is among the many suppliers that responded to this need. KC Jones Galvanoplastia, S. DE R.L DE C.V., the Mexican arm the company, begins operations in Apodaca, Mexico, in February 2016 with a new rack plating line that will be among the largest in North America for zinc, zinc nickel and zinc Iron. Many major OEMs have an established presence in Mexico, including GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Renault-Nissan, Honda and Mazda. Over the next two years, other automakers have planned moves to Mexico, including BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Infnity and Hyundai. Kia plans to open a plant in Northern Mexico this year. And a joint venture agreement between Renault-Nissan has determined that Daimler will produce vehicles for Mercedes Benz and Infnity in the same factory. So why are we making this move? Well, a few years ago, KC Jones Plating prepared to place an automatic, electroless nickel plating line inside a customer's facility. Just days before closing, KC Jones lost the contract to a Mexico-based company. More recently, we recognized dissatisfaction among customers and suppliers in Mexico. They expressed dificulty fnding platers to deliver high quality services, on-time delivery and target pricing. Recognizing the trend towards increased manufacturing in Mexico and a need for plating services that would support that, KC Jones' executives decided to explore the possibility of establishing a presence in Mexico. President and Owner Robert Burger and I took a series of trips to gage the feasibility of extending our plating brand into the Mexican market. During our frst trip, Burger expressed a desire to see KC Jones plating in Mexico before he retired. On our second trip, we found the new customer needed to justify the expansion. Less than a year has passed, and KC Jones is within weeks of launching an active operation in Mexico. Process Advanced Technology built our plating line in cooperation with GPR Wet Process Group to develop automation and controls and Dipsol of America as our chemical supplier. "Designing our Mexican plant in a newer facility and with new equipment provided us an opportunity to overcome certain challenges we have faced at our U.S. facilities," Burger says. The new plating line features fve hoists and cathode agitation on all 12 plating cells, which improves thickness distribution. It plates the inside diameter (ID) of very small tubular products, and agitation helps move solutions through the ID of parts. Separate rectifcation for the ID anodes enables precise control of plating thicknesses within the ID of tubes. Furthermore, lids on plating cells, chromate tanks and sealer tanks eliminate cross contamination of chemistries. At 140 feet long and 60 feet wide, the plating line, which includes dual pretreatment and provides the fexibility to handle various substrates and machining oils, will run Dipsol zinc, zinc nickel, and zinc iron. Total cost will exceed $3 million. Mark Burger is the business development manager at KC Jones Plating. For information, visit kcjplating.com. instance, threads are typically disregarded in salt-spray testing as they tend to accumulate and hold salt water. Corrosion runs, areas where a single area of corrosion seems to spread to the rest of the part, are to be ignored as well. Monthly evaluations of the chamber's corrosivity gives marked assurance that the chamber is running accurately and consis- tently. Steel panels are placed in the chamber, one nearest the collector and one farthest away. Panels are exposed for a deter- mined number of hours that correspond with a range of weight loss. For instance, panels exposed for 96 hours should average a weight loss of 1.5347 grams with a variance of +/- 21 percent. What this means is that the same part, with the same thickness, the same type of deposit, and the same coating, is allowed to vary by 21 percent in either direction for each trial run in the same chamber and still be considered a well-run chamber. In other words, if you wanted some chromated zinc-plated parts to pass 96 hours in salt spray to first white rust (FWW), the exact same part, with the exact same chromate thickness, is expected to reach anywhere between 75 and 116 hours in a good salt-spray chamber. Therefore, unless your part averages 122 hours in salt spray, on average, half your parts will fail to reach 96 hours and the other half will reach 96 hours and above. The authorized or permitted variability when testing parts in different chambers for the chamber to be considered good or accurate is plus or minus 36 percent. If you wanted some chromated zinc-plated parts to pass 96 hours in salt spray to white rust, the exact same part is expected to reach anywhere between 61 and 131 hours if placed in two different chambers. So, unless your part averages 150 hours in salt spray, on average, half your parts will fail and half your parts will get to 96 hours and above. Corrosion Resistance There are a number of variables involved not only in condi- tioning a surface to be corrosion resistant to a particular standard, but also in making sure that the test is done correctly and no other elements outside the finishing purview are the cause of failures. The key is in learning more about how to design, plate, coat, package and transport parts and how to engage your NSS operator to ensure he is operating his chamber with every degree of accuracy and repeatability. Adam Blakeley is a CEF 1 and a technical service representative for MacDermid. For information, visit macdermid.com. For informa- tion on H.E. Orr Co., visit heorr.com. For info on G2MT Labs, visit g2mtlabs.com. Some information for this article came from Frank Altmayer's NASF corrosion course.