Exotic Substrate Plating

At Alexandria Metal Finishers, we have the expertise to plate exotic substrates such as beryllium copper, titanium, invar, kovar, magnesium and stainless steels. Using proprietary processes, we are able to provide premium quality plating services that meet all applicable defense, aerospace, and commercial manufacturing standards, backed by our ISO 9001 certification.

Beryllium-copper alloys are used in a wide variety of applications because of their electrical and thermal conductivity, high strength and hardness, nonmagnetic properties, along with good corrosion and fatigue resistance. These applications include the making of spot-welding electrodes, springs, non-sparking tools and electrical contacts. It is, however, brittle, chemically reactive and expensive to refine and form. For this reason it is imperative to get the job done right the first time. With over 60 years of plating experience we have fine-tuned our process to a superior result.

Some exotic metals are characterized by their extremely high melting points which range well above those of iron, cobalt, and nickel. These are sometimes called refractory metals. Because of these high operating temperatures the adhesion between the base metal and plated metal has to be very reliable. The most extensively used of these metals are tungsten, tantalum and molybdenum.

Magnesium alloys are the easiest of the structural metals to machine and they can be shaped and fabricated by most metalworking processes, including welding. As the lightest structural metal available, magnesium has a high strength-to-weight ratio. It shares this trait with titanium. This may be the reason we consistently see these metals in critical aerospace and transportation applications. Our titanium plating services have taken a leap forward in the past few years.