Cadmium Application/Machining
 

The thread on reducing friction on aluminum parts reminded me of something. We are in need of a company that can apply Cadmium onto aluminum to a thickness of around .1“ (I need to verify that) and then machine it down after application. We have a local company that does it now, but would like to find another. The current vendor flame-sprays the Cadmium on.

Any ideas?

Seems like electroplating would be the way, but I have no expertise on the matter.

At .1 inch I would guess they spray it on. That’s a lot to electroplate.

Even if I could, I wouldn't! Cadmium is nasty stuff!

Yeah, come to find out this is the problem. Nobody wants to mess with it. Unfortunately, for our application it is pretty much the best material out there. Everything else is exotic to the point of being unobtanium.

I do a lot of cadmium plating with a shop that does a lot of Lockheed Martin, I'll ask my shop tomorrow.

Do you want yellow cadmium or clear?

Perhaps zinc is a better option and probably 0.001” thickness

This isn‘t really “plating”, but if it could plated thick enough that might be an option. We have to apply it pretty thick and then machine it down to the final thickness.

We have to use cadmium (very pure) as we are using it as a neutron decoupler material. This our application:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237627008_Burnup_of_Cadmium_Decoupler_Material_in_ the_Spallation_Neutron_Source_Moderators

We could look at materials like silver-indium-cadmium, but that is usuaally applied by hipping and we can’t do that due to the size of our moderators.

Mike, I can ask them about any process that would do the job for you. So I am assuming no chromate layer over the cadmium.

Let me know dimensions too.

No chromate for sure. I will have to verify the thickness tomorrow. Thanks!