Zinc plating of metal

Unlike paint and lacquer coating, metal zinc plating provides not only a barrier anticorrosion protection, but also an electrochemical one (in a galvanic couple of iron-zinc, zinc protects the base metal even in places where the surface is damaged). At the same time, the service life of high-quality zinc-plated parts in conditions of various external atmospheric forcing is estimated at several decades.

There are two industrial methods of metal zinc plating - hot and electrolytic (cold galvanizing). In the first method, the zinc coating obtained by hot dipping of the product in a bath with molten metal consists of a number of layers that are an alloy of zinc with the base metal - ferro-zinc alloy. The thickness of the zinc coating can be in the range of 0.8-2 microns. In cold galvanizing, zinc coating is applied by the cathode method through conductive and gummed rollers dipped in an electrolyte in an operating cell. The thickness of the applied zinc coating is 0.5-10 microns.