Heinz:

It is almost certain that some residue is on the surface, which is causing
the non-adherent Gold.

Please review the process again....you are putting galvanic Gold (I think it
is more commonly called "immersion gold") on to electroless Nickel, long
after the electroless Nickel has been plated?

If this is the case, this pretty well explains it right there.  Electroless
Nickel set up one of the more passive oxide films known, and if you do not go
directly from the Nickel plating tank to the Gold tank, you are asking for
almost exactly what you are getting.

You will have to do drastic things, consider even a brief gold/nickel
stripper, to reactivate the Nickel enough to give you adherent Gold plating.

If I am understanding this correctly, and you are applying dryfilm to the
electroless Nickel, (heat and time = very passive oxide finish on the
Nickel), you may be facing an very difficult activation process to get the
Gold to adhere.

Rudy Sedlak
RD Chemical Company

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