Why did they do this? Lots of gold plating, but why??

[silversaddle1]

These gold plated connectors came off the backplane of an old IBM AS-400 e-server tower. What I can't figure out is why they would plate the whole thing when only the contacts come in contact with the bus bar. You can see the buss bar in the pic, it's plated on the end, and is 1/8 inch thick by 1 inch wide. Look at the close-up of the connector and you can see the contact points. The whole thing is plated copper. There would be no reason to plate copper with brass, so I'm guessing it's gold plate. These would be used on both the power supply and to power the backplane itself. I know it would be high current draw, but man! Any ideas? There are about 135 of these connectors in the units I'm scrapping now.

 

[Anonymous]

They most likely plated the entire thing because it would be hard to know the exact point that contacts will be made. Also to do smaller areas they would have to mask and then remove the mask, then maybe corrosion could get under the thin contact points, and lastly, quality pays more.

Jim

 

[Gold Trail]

I just ran a bunch of those idenical parts through my sulfuric cell with GREAT results. surprisingly, the plateing is pretty good.

Save them!!

Ryan

 

[qst42know]

If this is a high visibility part the plating may be partly cosmetic.

Is this part seen by the consumer or hidden inside the case?

 

[glorycloud]

Backplanes are normally out of the way in the back of the server.
I doubt it's a cosmetic look pretty thing.

Some of the old backplanes that I used to see (never processed) out of
IBM systems always seemed to be pretty seriously plated. Gee, I guess
I may have to go back and bug some of my old homey's to see what
they want to part with. 8)

 

[silversaddle1]

I just ran a bunch of those idenical parts through my sulfuric cell with GREAT results. surprisingly, the plateing is pretty good.

Save them!!

Ryan

What kind of results did you get?!!! Please tell!!!

Like I said, there's about 135 of them in this batch of units.

 

[silversaddle1]

If this is a high visibility part the plating may be partly cosmetic.

Is this part seen by the consumer or hidden inside the case?

No, these are mounted on a backplane and then they have a black plastic cover over them. You can't see them unless you strip the backplane.

 

[glorycloud]

What unit-model did they come from? I see lots of older stuff come through
on bids and offer sheets.

Thanks!

 

[silversaddle1]

What unit-model did they come from? I see lots of older stuff come through
on bids and offer sheets.

Thanks!

These came out of older IBM AS-400 E-Server systems.