FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 3322

TOKYO, December 10, 2019 - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) announced today that it has received an R&D 100 Award for an innovative one-piece-flow automatic-sliding plating machine that enables plating plants to achieve improved productivity and reduced environmental load. The award was received during the R&D 100 Awards ceremony, which took place in San Francisco, USA on December 5. To date, Mitsubishi Electric has received 26 R&D 100 Awards from R&D World.

Electroplating is a process that puts the target item into contact with a plating solution via an electrode, without requiring a plating bath, enabling just the contact surface to be plated while sliding by the electrode.

Features of Award-winning Technology and Equipment

1. 1)Deploys high-speed plating technology for improved productivity
   • Liquid resistance is reduced by greatly shortening the distance between electrodes during plating.
   • Reduced liquid resistance enables use of high current for faster film formation.
   • High-speed film formation shortens process time for continuous one-piece-flow plating without reducing processing volume, realized improved automation with a downsized machine.
   • Compared with conventional batch-processing method for high-volume plating, processing time per unit is reduced to about one-fifth and productivity is greatly reduced to just 45 seconds per piece, compared to 215 seconds using conventional plating processes at certain Mitsubishi Electric factories.
2. 2)Reduces environmental load through high-efficiency, high-quality sliding plating technology
   • Highly efficient sliding plating technology reduces plating solution to one-tenth that of current process and low-loss solution-circulation system greatly reduces amount of wasted solution.
   • Optimizes amount of plating solution by accurately controlling both solution supplied to electrode and spreading speed, and by improving plating film quality.

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• Public Relations Division Mitsubishi Electric Corporation