Abstract

Cottage metal casting and plastic industries producing diverse automobile and automotive spare parts are springing up at very high rate in the country. Surface finishing defects usually affect and reduce the quality and efficiency of some machine parts produced. The need to improve on the quality of the surface as remedy to wear and corrosion of steel and aluminium alloy used in hydraulic brake cylinder of automobile motivated this work. The design and fabrication of a low cost nickel-electroless line is reported in this paper. The EN process is driven by autocatalysis, the reduction of nickel ion in the hypophosphite bath. The fabrication consists of a pre-treatment line and the EN plating bath. The equipment was tested and found suitable for the coating of moderate size mild steel, cast aluminium alloy and plastic substrates. Electroless-nickel (EN) plating is useful in enhancing uniformity of metal coating on the surface of non-uniform and porous substrates.