As mentioned earlier, the roughening process has a large effect on the bonding force of non-metal plating . How to choose the roughening process is related to the availability of metal coatings with practical value. At the same time, we must also consider many factors such as cost and environmental protection.
Chemical coarsening should be the preferred process for good adhesion. However, chemical coarsening has serious environmental pollution. Therefore, from the perspective of environmental protection, physical methods such as wet blasting or barreling should be used as much as possible. When the coating has a certain thickness and the surface gloss is not excessively high, the physical method is better.
There is also a class of plastic or non-metallic materials that cannot be chemically or only physically roughened. Mechanical roughening requires special equipment, and if dry blasting is used, there is also the problem of dust pollution in the operating environment. Suitable protective measures are required, so wet sand blasting is usually used.
Of course, for some large-volume production, companies with strict requirements on surface roughness and coating adhesion and environmental protection measures, chemical methods are still needed. In fact, most plastic electroplating plants use chemical methods for roughening. At the same time, the environmental pollution problem of chemical law has long attracted the attention of all parties. The roughening process with low pollution or less pollution and no pollution is also under development.
For some non-metals where surface roughening is difficult, a combined coarsening method using physical and chemical methods is also used to enhance the surface roughening effect. This method is often used in the development of new non-metal plating products. The goal is to obtain useful coatings for further research by new product developers, and then to determine the roughening process in mass production or the production process in the future production.