Mil-C-26074

When providing metal finishing for highly specified industries like Aerospace and Defense, there is often a very little, if not any, margin for error. Metal finishing is one piece of a massive manufacturing and quality assurance process. While we may not be assembling the aircraft themselves, our finishes play a vital role in the manufacturing process. If our processes don’t fully comply with our customer’s expectations, we can potentially derail an entire multimillion-dollar process. In order to ensure consistency across suppliers and contractors, these industries will often create their own set of standards and procedural practices that they require. These standards are referred to as Specs.

At AOTCO we comply with a wide range of specs and standards to ensure that we are providing our customers with the exact procedural requirements they request. These specs, along with a thorough purchase order, help us fully understand what is expected of us and our suppliers. One of those specs is Mil-C-26074.

Perhaps the most common Nickel-plating spec, Mil-C-26074 is the military standard for electroless nickel plating. The spec highlights four classes (1-4) and three grades (A, B, and C). Class is used to identify what procedural changes or post treatments are required, and the three grades determine the minimum required thickness.

Benefits of Electroless Nickel Plating Mil-C-26074

Compared to Electrolytic Nickel, Electroless Nickel provides a unique set of qualities that are useful across a wide range of applications.

• The finish is more ductile than its electrolytic counterpart, as well as more resistant to corrosion.
• It also has great lubricity, making it more useful for components that need high wear resistance or flexibility.
• Electroless Nickel Plating can bond with any metal substrate and has no thickness limits, making it more versatile than Electrolytic Nickel.
• Electroless Nickel plating has higher hardness and abrasion resistance than Electrolytic Nickel, making it the stronger finish of the two.