We talked with Joe Zabielski from Ronatec about the new Paladin high-phos electroless nickel chemistry, which the company says offers outstanding corrosion protection and hardness.
Zabielski says Paladin has passed salt spray tests up to 7500 hours and has plated hardness equivalent to mid-phos baths.
“Paladin is a novel high phosphorus, electroless nickel process developed to address two key issues when using EN as a coating,” he says. “First and foremost, it is highly corrosion resistant. We have measured salt spray performance over 4130 steel panels past 7,500 hours. That is exceptional as a standard high phosphorus is generally known to plate between 500 to 1,000 hours of salt spray resistance.”
Further, Zabielski says Paladin is able to address a key issue of high phosphorus electroless nickel, which is that it is a relatively soft coating compared to a mid-phos electroless nickel.
“We've been able to achieve a knoop hardness of about 570 to 620 knoops,” he says. “A general high-phos a knoop hardness is 450 to 525, so that puts us firmly in mid-phos territory, which again addresses why people use mid-phos instead of high-phos.”
Other characteristics of Paladin:
- Maintains high-phos characteristics, non-magnetic, amorphous coating, and passes nitric acid test.
- One component make up, self pH adjusting, high speed deposition rate.
- Enhanced wear resistance, superior to traditional HPEN.
- Tested and proven results performed at a NADCAP-accredited materials testing lab.
- It is 10-15 times more corrosion-resistant than traditional high-phos electroless nickel.
- It is a high-phos but equally hard to medium phosphorus electroless nickel.
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