PENGARUH VARIASI KONSENTRASI KATALIS PALADIUM TERHADAP KARAKTERISTIK FISIK DAN MEKANIK PELAPIS NIKEL PADA PLASTIK ABS DENGAN METODE ELECTROLESS NIKEL
Abstract
Plastic is one material that can be used as an alternative to metal substitutes because these materials have many superior properties, such as lightweight, corrosion resistant, and relatively cheap. To improve the quality, surface treatment can be done by coating them with electroless nickel plating method.
Nickel metal will be used as coating material in this research. The coated material is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastics. In this research, variations of palladium catalyst solution concentration at activation stage will be used with variation of catalyst 3ml, 5ml, and 7ml. This research aims to determine the effect of palladium catalyst concentration on activation stage to physical and mechanical properties of coating layer by testing hardness, wear, coarseness, and coating thickness resulting from electroless plating on specimen.
Electroless plating process increases hardness and coating thickness while roughness and wear rate are decreases. In this experiment, the best specimens were obtained with 7ml of catalyst concentration with hardness value 83.6 SHN, wear rate 0.0003 mm2 / Kg, coarseness 0,506 μm, and layer thickness 1,82 μm.