ELECTROLESS NICKEL BORON PROCESS Universal Chemical Technologies Inc., Stuart, Fla. Universal Chemical Technologies’ UltraCem electroless nickel boron process, which delivers a deposit suitable for steels, alu- minum, titanium, casting substrates, sintered metals, and other substrates, is being tested, and in many cases approved, for many applications in defense, automotive, aerospace, etc. The features and benefits of this technology, which include superior hardness, complete uniformity, low coefficient of friction, wear resistance, a strong metallurgical bond, and ductility attributes, make this a very interesting deposit for industrial considera- tions. As an added feature, the process contains no thallium, arsenic, cyanides, acids, or other unfriendly ingredients, making it an excellent candidate for the replacement of chrome. The bath is repeatable, scalable, and user-friendly to the finisher. The deposit is a vertical nodular structure, very dense, and offers significant performance enhancement to all metal sub- strates.

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ELECTROLESS NICKEL PROCESS Stapleton Technologies, Long Beach, Calif: Stapleton provides a family of ultrapure autocatalytic processes for semiconductor processing and has recently incorporated these improvements into the AUTONIC MX process. These improvements include 0. l- pm filtration and reduction of trace elements to ppb levels.

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ELECTROLESS NICKEL PLATING LINE Sessler Surface Finishing Systems, Venice, Fla. This nickel phosphorus plating line, featuring a steel framework, places anything needing a lot of access on the ground floor with the plating line itself on the second floor. Water and wasterwater treat- ment, maintenance, and chemical dosage tanks, pumps, rectifiers, and the load and unload station are located on the ground floor. The doors of the loading station have to be closed to start the automatic run (lifting and transporting through the line with automatic hoists). There is also enough space for logistic operations. The line processes steel and stainless steel as a priority, but can also plate copper alloys, aluminum, and magnesium. Pretreatment for steel, stainless steel, and copper alloys is placed in one row and pretreat- ment for aluminum and magnesium in a second row. To protect the line from dust there are pneumatic covers over each active station.

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36 Metal Finishing