How to measure Ni coating thickness on brass

[Hercules28]

Dear all,

I am coating Brass parts with high P Ni.
Coating is about 7 to 10 micrometers.

Is there a technique/tool I can use to measure the the thickness?
So far I have been cutting them and use an SEM... Which is expensive...

Thanks,

Herc.

 

[IRstuff]

X-Ray Fluorescence might be a possibility:

http://www.siint.com/en/products/xrf/tec_descriptions/descriptions_e.html

http://www.siint.com/en/documents/technology/xrf_analysis/application_SEA_037e.pdf

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[israelkk]

Measure and records sample parts dimensions before coating and measure them again after coating using a micrometer.

 

[salmon2]

Once you done a bunch of tests with sem, shouldn't you be able to establish a correlation between thickness and your coating premeter?

 

[Hercules28]

Israelkk,

Well, we also have variation in our casting so that wouldn't be very accurate.

Salmon2,

We use an outside supplier for the coating so we want to have an easy check on his consistency. He has been unreliable in the past.

I like IRstuff's idea. I am going to look into it today, see how much the equipment costs.

Herc

 

[EdStainless]

I am not sure that that is thin enough to do with XRF. The method is to analyze Cu (in your case) at a few different energy levels (tube voltage). You will see no Cu at low levels and it will increase at higher levels. You should be able to correlate this to thickness by sectioning those samples.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Plymouth Tube

 

[Thermalsp]

Can you mask your testing coupon to have partial area coated with Ni and the rest uncoated for a step? Then you could use a surface Profilometer to let the stylus scanning from the coating to the uncoated area to measure the step, which will give your coating thickness.

 

[Compositepro]

One method is to use a precision grinding wheel to grind a tiny divot and an optical microscope to take measurements.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xE...ent grinding wheel optical microscope&f=false

 

[TVP]

Herc,

There are hand-held devices based on non-destructive principles (ultrasonic, eddy current) that can measure this type of combination. Here is an example of one:

http://www.defelsko.com/p6000/positector6000.pdf