Investigation of pre and post plating surface roughness of electroless nickel phosphorus coated substrate for diamond turning application

In an overarching project to reduce the number of defects found in electroless nickel phosphorus alloy (EN-P) coatings on large diamond-turned components used in the next generation of reel-to-reel (R2R) printing stations, the significance of the coating surface on achieving a wear resistant and optically smooth surface has been investigated. This paper presents an investigation that focuses on the substrate roughness variation achieved through different pre-treatment methods prior to coating using a commercial plating solution. It looks at the number of features observed pre and post plating. The results provide some suggestions with respect to the diamond machining of a 100 micron thick EN-P coating.