off topic - mold plating

I don't know anything about thermoform molds, but a quick look at a 15 year old copy of a materials handbook says that pure Nickel has roughly 1/2 to

1/3 the conductivity of Aluminum, depending on which alloy is used. Since the plating thickness is probably some hundreds of microinches and the distance to your cooling lines is probably close to an inch, I would guess that you can safely ignore it.

Here is a case where Cliff gave a perfectly reasonable and reasonably helpful reply. Unfortunately, of the 89 posts when I logged on, 70 were from Cliff or some of his pals ragging on JB. Since JB has started using SolidWorks, I would guess that he has more than one useful post out of 70. Give it a rest, Cliff et. al.

Jerry Steiger

Jerry, All of that crap aside, hard coat aluminum.

Heat Transfer with a few thousandths of an inch thick coating won't change heat transfer materially.

Coatings to alter friction, hardness, corrosion resistance, dent resistance, chemical resistance, optical surface finish, etc. are many and varied. I have used a half dozen and there are many more used in molds depending on use and base metal, and there are a dozen commonly used metal alloys.

look at:

more exists out there on the web no doubt, but I've not looked in the last few years.

There have been articles in MoldMaking & Plastics magazines that I recall seeing, and they can be of great help in getting overviews.

Bo

In addition to checking:

Check out

and search for plating = 59 hits.

Bo

Moldmaking Technology magazine had an August 2003 article on mold coatings that you may find on their website with the search term "Mold Coatings" which gives 12 hits.

Its worth reading the articles for just what you are looking for in heat transfer.

Bo

Also check out the article & table in the following link for usedful info on a number of aspects of platings and their issues.

Bo

The reason we use nickel is for wear, it extended the life from hard coating by 4-5 x

a new custumer just wanted to make sure the cooling would be as good. In real life we had not noticed a differnece in cooling and since we coated the whole inserts it also keep them from getting corroded from the cooling water so that is a added benifit