Visit our New Web Site!

Currently, we are constructing our web site. It should be finished by the end of March. If you have access to the World Wide Web on the Internet, you can visit it now and bookmark it and come back later when it is finished.

The Web site will have information about our products including:

• News letters
• Complete catalog of hard chrome plating supplies
• Chromic acid purifier description
• Porous pot operating instructions
• Current price list
• Hard chrome plating on wire
• Ordering information

The uniform resource locator (URL) for our web site is as follows:

http://hard-chromesystems.com

I've only started SURFING THE WEB in the last few months myself. I am amazed at how fast and easy it is to find useful information. For example, last week I had a customer who needed an obsolete replacement part for a rectifier. I would have searched for hours to find a supplier using the phone book. I was able to locate the part in minutes on the Web. If you haven=t gotten your feet wet yet on the Web, I suggest you go to your local library and use their computers to access the Internet.

If you don't have a computer at home and you want Internet access, you might try getting it through Web TV. Web TV should be available at any large electronics store for a few hundred dollars.

I expect the World Wide Web will make the fax machine obsolete fairly soon. I was surprised at how many plating shops have web sites already.

New Products

We now have 3-mil aluminum tape. It is paper backed and available in 1-, 2-, and 3-inch widths. It is very useful in jobs where you don=t want the tape to come off in small pieces when you remove it. This is in addition to the 1.5-mil aluminum foil tape we supplied previously. You should have both thicknesses on hand.

Remember, when used correctly, aluminum tape and foil saves time and money. We also have yellow PVC tape with and without adhesive. Using stop-off wax instead of aluminum tape is labor intensive and can cause poor plating results and rejects. Hard chrome platers who use the reversible-rack system with tape charge less, do a better job, and make higher profits at the same time. Hard chrome platers who use the obsolete conventional method with wax stop off, spend twice as much time on labor preparing the piece for plating.

• 10 inch by 15 inch by 1/4 inch thick
• 16.5 inch by 26.5 inch by 3/8 thick

Lead mats also come in several different alloys:

• Chemically pure soft lead
• One percent antimony lead
• Six percent antimony lead
• Six percent tin lead

About the Porous Pot

(electrolytic diaphragm)

The porous pot collects impurities dissolved in all types of chrome solutions including decorative chrome, chromic acid plastic etching, chromate, bright dips, and anodizing. It can be used in any chromic acid solution that has metal contamination problems including reoxidizing trivalent chrome.
The porous pot we provide is a 40-percent porous, true-ceramic pot, with pores 2 to 1 micron in diameter. It is available in three models including one for tanks under 700 hundred gallons, one for tanks under 2000 gallons, and one for shallow tanks.
The porous pot acts like a filter in a limited sense. However, more importantly, it uses electricity to drive the impurities through the pores. This action separates even dissolved impurities from the chrome solution. In fact, you may even find that the porous pot has separated dissolved oil from the solution. We have designed the porous pot to fit in most plating tanks.

The porous pot has a footprint that is only 6-inches by 18-inches. If you don=t have enough room to fit one in your tank, you can put the porous pot into a plastic 55-gallon drum and use a small pump to counter overflow the chromic acid for circulation. The porous pot rack is totally compatible with chrome plating tanks that use the Reversible-rack, two-busbar system supplied by Hard Chrome Plating Inc.

The porous pot is built into a reversible hard chrome plating rack. It can also be adapted to fit a three-busbar tank or a decorative bright chrome tank. When you operate the porous pot in the plating position, impurities collect inside the porous pot. If you install the porous pot in a rinse tank and operate it in the reverse position, chromic acid collects inside the porous pot allowing the rinse water to be reused. This means you can use the same porous pot to separate impurities in the chrome tank and to separate chromic acid from the rinse water. No other affordable technology on the market has this dual functionality!

Questions and Answers

This column will answer some of the most common questions we are asked. If you have questions, send them in and we will try to print the answers in future issues.

Question:
I have pits in the base metal of an expensive stainless-steel part. Is there a way to weld them shut?

Answer:
You can use a special type of welder to weld the pits shut. The special welder is called a Dot Welder. Dot Welder pellets are available in stainless steel, general purpose steel, chrome steel, cast iron, and you can even weld chrome pits using chrome pellets. You can obtain chrome pellets from the chrome buildup nodules on your racks. You can buy Dot Welders and pellets from Hard Chrome Plating Consultants Inc. 216-631-9090.

Question:
I have a copy of Hard Chrome Plating Simplified, First Edition, written in 1975. Is there a later version?

Answer:
Check your copy of Hard Chrome Plating Simplified, with the green cover, and see if it ends on page 382. The fourth edition, with 382 pages, was written in 1981. Additional pages were added in 1990.

Question:
In Hard Chrome Plating Simplified, you said that the Hard Chrome Fixtures manual is out of print. Is there any other manual where I can get color pictures of hard chrome plating reversible rack job setups?

Answer:
Buy a copy of Hard Chrome Fixtures II, a manual consisting of 80 full-color photographs of chrome shops, racked jobs, and other related images. Order this now! It may be out of print soon due to the high cost of reproducing color photographs.

Question:
What is in a set of fixtures for a deep tank with large conforming tank anodes, part number SF08?

Answer:
The fixtures in the set are used for shafting and hydraulic rods A set of fixtures for a deep tank with large conforming-tank anodes consists of the items described in the following table:

Items In a Set of Fixtures for a Deep Anode Tank (SF08)

Question:
What is in a complete set of 12 racks, part number SA12?

Answer:
A complete set of 12 racks and accessories consists of the racks and accessories described in the
Items In a Complete Set of 12 Racks (SA12)

Part # Qty. Description
RT01 9 1-inch copper rack tops
RT15 2 1-2 inch copper racks
DT05 1 Double top copper rack top
MF01 1 1-1/2 inch die and mold framework (unassembled)
CB01 5 1-inch clamping bottoms
CB05 5 2- inch clamping bottoms
CB15 3 1-2 inch clamping bottoms
BB01 2 1-inch blank bottoms
BB05 2 2- inch blank bottoms
BB15 2 1-2 inch blank bottoms
PB05 1 5-hole production bottom with set screws
PB04 1 4 V-slot production bottom w/set scr.
A001 6 1-2 x 1-2 x 1/4 inch thick 90E angle bottoms
V005 1 2-inch V bottom
V001 1 1-inch V bottom
V015 1 1-2 inch V bottom
SP01 1 12-hole production spine rack w/set screws
CC01 1 1-inch cathode crossover
CC15 1 3/8 x 1 and 2-inch cathode crossover
CA15 2 3/8 x 1-2 inch anode crossover
WH01 1 1-inch copper work holder
WH15 1 1-2 inch aluminum work holder
TT02 1 set Two reversing tabs for deep-tank anodes
MB01 1 Magnet bottom
DBA1 3 Double bar anode crossover
SB10 1 set Offset side bars, 1-inch set of 2
SB01 1 set Side bars, 1-inch set of 2
SBL1 1 set Side bars, 1-inch set of 2, extra long
SB015 3 sets Side bars, 1-2 inch set of 2
Hardware kit 1/4 x 20 bolts

Items In a Complete Set of 12 Racks (SA12)

Remainder of this Page Under Construction

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