304 stainless steel plate water plating and vacuum plating process

Currently, the mainstream coloring method for 304 stainless steel plates on the market is vacuum electroplating, but water plating is also used for some special colors, such as black titanium. The color of the black titanium plate produced by vacuum electroplating is grayish black. It is said that compared with rose gold, champagne gold and other colors, it will cause greater damage to the titanium furnace. Therefore, generally speaking, we recommend customers to use water plating process for 304 stainless steel plates with black titanium color. Water-plated black titanium feels "authentic" than electroplated black, and the effect is more vivid. However, vacuum electroplating has high stability and each has its own advantages. Let's learn more about it with the stainless steel plate manufacturers.

The vacuum electroplating process is also called vacuum ion plating or PVD coating. This process can make the surface obtain any color by adjusting the equipment parameters. The principle is to use vacuum arc discharge technology in the environment of a vacuum chamber to generate arc light on the surface of the target, causing the target to evaporate and form atoms and ions. Under the action of the electric field, the atoms and ion beams bombard the surface of the 304 stainless steel plate of the anode at high speed. At the same time, the reaction gas needs to be injected into the vacuum chamber, and a layer of colored coating can be formed on the surface of the 304 stainless steel plate, such as: rose gold, champagne gold, sapphire blue, brown, bronze, rose red, etc.

The essence of the water plating process is coloring through chemical reactions. It is generally used to plate titanium black. This process is relatively easy and cheap, but the processing time will be relatively long. The processing time of a 304 stainless steel plate is about half an hour. The time for 201 stainless steel plate is much faster, only ten minutes. The black color of electroplating is grayer, while the black color of water plating is brighter.

Compared with the water plating coloring process, 304 stainless steel plate electroplating has many advantages: first, the surface of the electroplated colored stainless steel plate can obtain a high-hardness coating, which has greater bonding force with the stainless steel surface and is not suitable for peeling; wear resistance and It has higher corrosion resistance, is also very stable, and resists high-temperature oxidation; the color of the electroplated layer is pure, and there will be no crusting or other phenomena. Therefore, stainless steel plate manufacturers generally use water plating to process black titanium color, and vacuum plating for other colors.

Nowadays, the processing of colored stainless steel decorative plates is also in a stage of gradual scale and maturity. Various colors can be processed according to the needs of each customer, and combined with various processes to achieve the effect you want. But while the process is mature, , our stainless steel plate manufacturers should also strictly control the quality of color plates.