The Top 5 Reasons to Replace your Plating Barrel

The Top 5 Reasons to Replace Your Plating Barrel

In the metal plating industry, productivity is valuable and there is no space for downtime, lost product, or reworking parts.  Often platers and manufacturers delay their barrel replacement well beyond the lifespan of the barrel, trying to make it last as long as possible.  Delaying barrel replacement exposes platers to five critical consequences: poor plating quality, increased rework, inconsistent plating thickness, chemical contamination, and operator safety risks.  In this article, we will briefly discuss each of these five risks and share some of the knowledge we have gained over our over 20 years of experience in the metal plating industry

Poor Plating Quality

Like any component, plating barrels can become worn out or damaged over time.  Some material cracks are internal and can go unnoticed.  For example, even the best hand-welded joints on a barrel body are susceptible to cracking.  Parts, especially small ones, can become trapped during processing and rinsing.  The chemical solution cannot flow freely around these trap parts.  Worse yet, trapped parts can accelerate these cracks during the next cycle.  We have seen many worn-out barrels during our decades in the industry.  This is why we manufacture our barrels using a single, molded body.  By thermally bending the body instead of hand welding we create an even surface where flat edges come together.  This bend is significantly less susceptible to cracking and trapping parts over time.

Increased Rework

When a barrel that is past its useful lifespan continues to be used, each batch of product must be inspected and sorted closely.  The operator or quality technician must carefully sort products that meet spec, the products that need to be reworked and the product that must be scrapped.  At first, this does not seem burdensome as there are only a few rejected parts.  After a few more cycles the rejected part count begins to multiply exponentially.  Rework is costly.  The operator must strip, refinish, and replate these parts.  Some platers estimate that the cost of rework is 3x-6x of the original plating process.  This cost comes directly out of the platers bottom line. 

Inconsistent plating thickness: Plating barrels play a crucial role in ensuring uniform and consistent plating thickness.  In the plating and surface finishing industries, chemical resistance and fluid flow around parts are table stakes.  Older barrels may not provide even distribution of the solution from the bath, leading to variations in plating thickness across the parts.  Our barrel design process prioritizes fluid flow throughout the barrel and around the parts inside.  The tight drill pattern in our Proteus® PP, ProKnob Polypropylene textured panels improves fluid flow and fluid exchange.  We also have experience with designing robust barrels that exchange fluid around challenging parts such as chains and long screws.

Chemical Contamination

A plating line has a variety of different process baths to control including cleaners, activators, plating solutions, and rinse tanks.  Maintaining the integrity of the process baths and rinse tanks can be tricky, especially for platers or chrome shops that do not have in-house solution analysis capabilities.  The ideal barrel has high solution flow while in the tank and would allow the solution to quickly drain out of the barrel when removed.  The trapped fluid becomes a contaminant for the next step in the process.  This increases both the rinse cycles and time.  The tight drill pattern and molded body joints in the Novo Metal Finishing Equipment plating barrels improve fluid flow and reduce the possibility of long-term exposure due to trapped chemicals.

Safety Risks

The structural integrity of old plating barrels can be compromised, increasing the risk of accidents or failures during operation.  This can result in injuries to workers, damage to equipment, or even environmental hazards.  Traditionally, plating barrels are under-supported, leaving them susceptible to warping and breaking over time.  We manufacture our plating barrels with several vertical back braces in anticipation of repetitive use and abuse.  The Novo MFE barrels are also designed with butt-welded door frames, which strengthen the door side of the barrel without creating another trap for fluid or parts.  However, even the most robust barrels need to be replaced over time.  It is always recommended to replace the barrel before a catastrophic material failure.

The pressure for platers to create the best quality, highest consistency, and lowest price is extremely high.  An aging plating barrel hurts plating quality, can increase rejection rates, lead to inconsistent plating thickness, introduce contamination, and pose safety risks.  This is why it is important to regularly inspect and replace plating barrels over time.  

We have seen many parts and challenges during the 20+ years of our manufacturing and design business.  If you are looking for a replacement part or an improved design for your replacement barrel, contact us [here].

About Novo Metal Finishing Equipment

Novo Metal Finishing Equipment (NMFE) designs, machines, fabricates, and assembles best-in-class plating equipment for the metal finishing industry. Founded in 2001 as Core Plating Technology, NMFE joined local industrial manufacturing company Novo Precision in 2021.  We operate a complete manufacturing facility within the Novo Campus in Bristol, Connecticut.  Our staff has more than 100 years of combined experience in wet processing and provides innovative solutions to metal processors' most difficult challenges.

Our product catalog includes plating barrels, plating tanks, barrel hanger arms, rack saddles, horns, portable barrels, gears, and cathode danglers.  We fabricated many exact-fit replacements and solution-providing components over the past few decades, making us a sought-after partner, resource, and reference for the metal plating industry.