Quote:
Originally Posted by 27litres
Does Cadmium plating still exist? Extremely toxic isn't it?
We used to get blokes asking for "Cad plated" bolts when I worked in that industry.
What that usually meant was bright Zinc plate. But sometimes they specifically wanted yellow Zinc.
There was a belief it was a better coating. I was never sure if it was due to being fractionally thicker, or less reactive with the additional chemical treatment to turn it yellow, or whether it was just the placebo effect?
|
Yes Cadmium plating still exists and yes it causes bone cancer, hair loss to name a few.
On its own cadmium plated components are light gray and you passivate them in chrome which causes them to go yellow. A 10um coating can whitstand 10 000 hours in a 60C salt bath which translates to many many years of normal use in a car without any corrosion as long as there's no mechanical damage to the coating.
Here are some pics of the jag parts before and during plating. Once again this was a one off favour for the company i used to work bosses mate:
