This week, one of our customer needs a quotation for sheet metal parts as following:

They need baking before Zinc plating. So now let’s share why some customer needs this procedure.

The baking process eliminates hydrogen embrittlement in the electroplating process (metal materials are either pickled or electroplated, both of which have the potential to leach atomic hydrogen into the material).Such hydrogen atoms enter into the lattice of the metal, causing external torsion of the lattice, resulting in great internal stress, the metal coating and matrix toughness decreased, the metal material becomes brittle. This is hydrogen embrittlement. At the same time there are often bubbling and pinhole phenomenon. Such as electroplating hydrogen embrittlement when the baking temperature in 200 to 240 degrees, heating 2 to 4 hours can be the vast majority of hydrogen removal. If the temperature is too high or the time is too long, it will easily lead to the annealing of the metal workpiece (that is, it will reduce the hardness and mechanical strength of the workpiece itself). If the temperature is too low or the time is too short, hydrogen embrittlement will not be eliminated completely