Industrial and Energy Equipment Finishing in Texas

Within reason, yes. Sulfamate nickel is the usual choice for dimensional restoration because it deposits at low internal stress and machines predictably, and it runs at our McAllen plant. Where the worn surface is a bore or an internal feature, electroless nickel reaches it more evenly. Send the drawing dimension, the current measured size and whether you want it plated to size or plated oversize and ground back.

Call the plant rather than emailing — Rowlett is 972-475-4300, McAllen is 956-800-4069 — and say on the call that it is a line-down, because that changes how the work is scheduled, not how it is quoted. Have the alloy, the finish callout and the critical dimension ready; a job that arrives without a specification waits for the answer before it waits for a tank.

Small, robust, non-nesting parts run in a barrel. Anything with a critical face, a long thin section, a fine thread that dents against its neighbors, or a machined surface that cannot take contact marks gets racked. Thickness across a barrel load is less even than across a rack, so a print carrying a minimum on one specific feature usually forces racking — that minimum normally traces back to a service condition on the ASTM B633 zinc plating specification.

Often, but not without risk. Stripping attacks the base metal to some degree, can raise smut or etch on aluminum, and re-introduces hydrogen into high-strength steel, so a re-bake may be required before the parts are usable. Send a sample first with the original finish identified rather than the whole lot — we will tell you whether it strips cleanly or whether the parts are better replaced. The design guide covers what survives a second pass.

Zinc with a trivalent passivate and a sealer covers most sheltered outdoor hardware, and zinc-nickel is the step up where there is salt spray, elevated temperature or an aluminum mating face. Where the part also has to resist abrasion or hold off a process chemical, high-phosphorus electroless nickel under ASTM B733 is usually a better answer than simply thickening the zinc. Describe the environment and we will propose the finish.

Yes. Free iron from tooling and heat tint from welding both have to come off first — heat tint in particular needs mechanical or chemical descaling, because passivating over it seals in a chromium-depleted layer and the part will still rust. Passivation of stainless steel covers the methods and the tests used to prove the passive layer formed.