Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?

June 10, 2009

Design engineers are fuming mad about the lack of decent options for cadmium as a plating material. A couple made comments in a recent study conducted by the Reed Business Information Research Department for Design News. “We need an environmentally friendly replacement with decent cost and performance,” says an engineer who designs equipment for in house use. ”These days, cadmium is effectively banned for environmental reasons, but none of the possible replacements meet all the performance requirements.” Cadmium has been widely used as a plating material because it offers good corrosion resistance, cathodic protection of steel, galvanic compatibility with aluminum, as well as excellent lubricity. Cadmium can be dyed to many colors and can be used as a final finish or a paint base. Inhalation of cadmium-containing fumes can result in chemical pneumonitis, pulmonary edema, and death. Human exposures to environmental cadmium are primarily the result of the burning of fossil fuels and municipal wastes It’s one of six substances banned by the European Union’s Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive.

If you have some thoughts, please contribute your ideas here.

Posted by Doug Smock on June 10, 2009 | Comments (5)

November 17, 2009

In response to: Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?
Jarl Havnson commented:

What about using CRES steel?

June 30, 2009

In response to: Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?
Anand@dolcera commented:

Hello,
we at dolcera are right now marketing a technology to replace cadmium plating and also provide equivalent resistance to corrosion/heat
for further info you may write me at
anand.shukla@dolcera.com

June 17, 2009

In response to: Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?
Ward B commented:

There isn't one. Nothing on the market has *all* of cadmium's good qualities. Replacements have some of the benefits, but need to be evaluated on a case by case basis to determine what trade-offs are acceptable. In other words, you can pick your poison...
My employer is in the aerospace industry, and has three possible replacements; which one gets used in a given application depends on the requirements for that specific part. These are zinc with trivalent chromate topcoat [the traditional hexavalent chromate topcoat is also banned by RoHS], tin-zinc plating, and zinc-nickel alloy plating.

June 15, 2009

In response to: Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?
William R. Wilson commented:

There are several low Zinc/Phosphatase conbinations that look better than Zinc. Check with a good metal plating outfit or another option is podwercoating.

June 15, 2009

In response to: Have Any Ideas For Cadmium Plating Replacements?
Chris P commented:

Why is this news - we have moved on to the problem of getting Zinc plating to meet ROHS requirements. It would be nice if a US steel maker made organically coated zinc preplated material that looked as good as Japanese stuff so we could use that. As it is the preplate that doesn't rust is horrible.
Go look inside a Sony VCR and try to find THAT steel in the US.

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