Plating and Finishing Dimensions

The work that a plating and finishing shop does is difficult to see. Literally.

The dimensions requested for a finish are most of the time smaller than what can be seen by the human eye. In the graphic below, the large gray area represents just a small portion of a large circle with a diameter of one inch. There are three small green dots in the bottom righthand corner. The largest dot represents the width of the human hair. The middle-sized dot represents the width of the smallest object that can be seen with the naked human eye. The smallest dot represents a common dimension, 200µ, otherwise noted as 2/10,000 of an inch, requested for the finish of a part.

Customers often send us threaded parts designed to fit inside other parts. It is obvious that if too much of a finish is placed onto the threaded area the part won’t fit properly inside of the other part. Hence, the typical finish is so miniscule that it’s presence on a threaded part won’t compromise the functionality of the connection between the two parts.

Yet, as amazing as it is, such microscopic finishing does protect parts from corrosion.