Yes it can plated, but (to my knowledge) the plating will only be as hard as it would be on soft, unhardened steel. As far as peel strength-that might depend on the type of tool steel chosen as certain types might have less "tack" depending on the alloying agents. The content of Chromium comes to mind here.

What I would be concerned about would be embrittlement of the parent steel just below the layer of plating. And I realize this may not be an issue at all. It is typically only an issue when the hardened steel must possess a sharp edge such as for a punch or die application.

Unfortunately, I do not have the experience with plating as I do with heat treatment. I too am interested to see what is posted here.

Best Regards,

Ing. Robert Forbus

Hi, thanks for your reply. your answer is convincing me. But Rc Hardness level that I have mentioned here is about parent material that is subjected to plating. Secondly the materials could be case hardened steel, HcHcr, OHNS, EN8 En19, EN 24, En 32B, EN36, EN45, etc as we use this tool steels under different hardness with heat treatment like Toughning, case hardening, full hardening etc., considering the appliction like sliding part, cutting and forming Punches and also to give corrosion resistance and easthetics to jig-fixtures parts. Now I hope I have put my question in detail and hope for the best knowledge sharing from you. Regards- rvdhara

I believe that Kwetz and others have provided you good insight as to what the plating would or would not contribute to the parts in use (sliding punching etc) where the plating would interfere and quickly be removed. The idea of using other coatings like TiN etc sounds like a possibly better approach for the "working surfaces."

milo

For your application, on jigs/fixtures, i suggest you try black oxidation . It gives very good corrosion resistance & aesthetics .It holds good on OHNS , case hardened,hardened steels..

I got into an issue about heat treated B-7 studs being galvanized many years ago. As best as I remember at the time you lost some of the strength rating when the studs were galvanized. I think it was due to the heat from the galvanizing affected the heat treatment of the studs. We started using the teflon coated heat treated studs and they are very nice. You can get them in many different colors and they don't rust as long as someone doesn't use a pair of channel locks or vise grip pliers to tighten them. http://www.texasbolt.com/ is where we get ours and the prices are very good. It is a very good selling point on the piping skids we build when all the studs are the same color and no rust trails running down the painted flanges after a couple of rains. I am sure that other types of steel could be teflon coated without damaging their hardness if studs can. Might be worth checking into.

pipewelder