Toyota develops stamping-type plating technology

- Significantly reduces the impact on our environment and transforms the plating process

- The new machines are to be launched on 1 July

Toyota Motor Corporation today announced that it developed the world's first stamping-type plating technology that uses a polymer membrane (solid electrolyte membrane).

This polymer membrane allows the metal ions to pass through, to apply plating like a stamp, only to those areas that require plating. The technology is used in the plating process for forming copper, nickel, and other metal coatings during the process of manufacturing electronic parts.

Toyota has also announced a collaboration with Mikado Technos and Kanematsu Corporation to manufacture and sell the new plating machines based on this new technology. The machines will be launched on 1 July. This new stamping-type plating machine eliminates the dipping process where parts to be plated are completely immersed in multiple baths of plating solution. 

As a result of the new tech, waste solutions can be dramatically reduced to about one-thirtieth and CO2 emissions to about one-third, which contributes to a significant reduction in the impact to the environment. Also, the technology reduces plating time and process footprint.

Over the next two to three years, Toyota hopes to sell the stamping-type plating machine for use by a number of companies as a test machine for verification and evaluation purposes. Then, from 2023 or 2024, with the aim of achieving widespread use, it will expand sales for general users as a full production machine.