Engineering plating - Current practice and future trends

Plating processes- both electroless and electrolytic- constitute important coating methods which are well established in all branches of engineering. Plated coatings have typically high density, good adhesion to the substrate materials and the advantages over thermal treatments since these do not cause arty distortion of the components. Plating processes can provide resistance to wear, corrosion, heat, a low co-efficient of friction or special electrical and magnetic properties etc. The processes are flexible, make good use of scarce resources and can convert a wide range of cheap substrates and make them suitable for sophisticated usage and purposes. Because of these attractive properties, emphasis in usage of plated coatings has shifted from purely decorative purposes to engineering applications( around 90% at present). This has acted as driving force for the development of newer plating processes and refinements in the existing plating processes. Processes like mechanical plating, dacrotizing and eco-friendly plating processes are being increasingly used in engineering plating. Current trend being to use selective plating, wherever possible and use efficient, easy-to-control processes and equipments. Composite coatings, pulse plating, high -speed plating and alloy plating are the other processes that have good future. The paper reviews, in brief, all these aspects giving the present status of the plating industry and the projections for the future.