Extend Your Bath Life and Increase Profits

How do we quantify total operating cost?

Electroless nickel is a complex system comprised of metal ions, reducing agent, chelating agents, buffers, stabilizers, and specialty additives. Input cost to deposit electroless nickel is inherently higher than electroplated deposits due to the chemical inputs required to drive the reduction-oxidation reaction. Electroless nickel baths in traditional operation also have a finite life. For these reasons, maximizing useful bath life and minimizing plate out are paramount. Many operators will calculate their average cost to deposit nickel, called “mil square foot cost”, by taking the fixed cost to make-up the bath plus the cost of all of the replenishments divided by the total volume nickel deposited. The more metal turnovers a bath can be operated successfully the lower the average mil square foot cost. The cost average reduction of the fixed make up cost is called amortization and this generally occurs around 5 MTOs for most baths. Therefore, in most cases, we want to target a minimum of 5 MTOs to get the best deposit cost structure and additional life beyond only further helps the bottom line. See the below tables to highlight the savings Meta-Plate Ultima XT II and Meta-Plate Ultra Phos OG customers are witnessing.

Increasing bath life not only reduces your chemical inputs but it also saves labor and downtime. Additionally, spent bath waste generation can be significantly reduced and that lowers our overall environmental impact. Longer MTOs can help you achieve your sustainability goals.