A waveguide success story
Our client, a major defence contractor, had been experiencing scrap rates of over 50% for a wave guide assembly. The expensive aluminium component incorporated a plastic insert heavily plated with silver. Several plating companies had tried without success to reduce the reject rate.When we investigated the design of the component we quickly realised that it would be virtually impossible to find cleaning and plating processes that would be compatible with all the materials present in the component. Masking off some parts of the component while cleaning or plating would not work because of the aggressive chemicals involved.
After considerable investigation and experimentation with the assembly of the component it became clear that the waveguide could be assembled after all the elements had been plated individually without any loss of performance. SGA technologies went on to manufacture the component in large quantites with a reject rate due to plating problems of below 1%.
