Electroless Nickel Heat Treatment

[dgallup]

ASTM B 733 Specification for Electroless Nickel section 6.6.1 states that the heat treatment shall be performed preferably within 1 hour but not more than 3 hours of plating. What is the reason for this time requirement?

We are having very low carbon steel, very soft parts EN plated so hydrogen embrittlement is not an issue. We would rather do the heat threatment ourselves rather than at the platers but that would entail as much as 3 days delay in plating if the parts sat over a weekend.

 

[TVP]

dgallup,

The heat treating requirement for a maximum of 3 hour delay is specific to the embrittlement relief process (section 6.6), which is intended to minimize the amount of time that high hardness materials spend with nascent hydrogen within the microstructure/on the surface. It is only required for steels with hardness > 31 HRC or tensile strength > 1000 MPa. If you are having plated parts that use low hardness/stength steel heated in order to increase adhesion and/or hardness, then this time delay requirement does not apply.

 

[dgallup]

Thanks. That's what I thought but wanted some confirmation.