On 30 Dec 2008 at 22:41, dwight elvey wrote:
To my knowledge, it is pure gold. It is difficult to
plate
alloys.
Not really that hard, depending on the alloy. For instance, I can
plate brass in my own shop--it's not difficult; just an acid bath
process. (Tin-lead) Solder has been electroplated onto PCBs for
decades.
Some people have pointed to their college chemistry texts and told me
definitively that it was impossible to electrodeposit an alloy. I
don't know where that one got started.
I'll agree that cooking up a plating bath can be a black art. Stuff
you'd never think would affect the outcome such as sugar sometimes
winds up in them and I know a retired fellow who ran a plating shop
who swore that he got better results than anyone else because he
urinated in his tanks.
From:
http://www.pfonline.com/articles/pfd0022.html
Hard, Bright Gold
Platers who gold plate contacts and connectors generally use bright
acid gold formulations. These baths contain complexed cobalt or
nickel in small quantities, to improve hardness and brightness of the
deposit. Such gold electroplates will be 99.7 to 99.9 pct pure, and
hardness can be 120 to 300 Knoop. The small amount of nickel or
cobalt will interfere with die bonding, so these baths cannot be used
for semiconductor plating. Hard, bright gold baths, if operated with
good housekeeping and chemical control, have very long life-often
three years and more.
Cheers,
Chuck