Bare steel has a short and tragic relationship with oxygen. They meet, they bond, and within weeks your beautiful machined part is wearing a crusty orange sweater nobody asked for. That sweater is rust, and rust does not negotiate.
Zinc plating is how we ruin rust's whole afternoon. We lay down a thin, even coat of zinc over your steel, and from that moment on the zinc does the dying so the steel does not have to. When moisture comes looking for a fight, it corrodes the zinc first. The part underneath stays clean and structurally employed. The technical term is sacrificial protection. We prefer to think of zinc as the bodyguard who takes the hit and keeps smiling.
On top of the zinc goes a chromate finish, which seals the deal and adds even more corrosion life. That is the layer that gives zinc plating its color, gold, clear, or black, depending on your taste and your print.
People always ask how long it lasts. The honest answer is that it depends on the thickness and the conditions, which is why we ask you for your salt spray target instead of inventing a number. Tell us how many hours to white rust or red rust you need, and we set the zinc and chromate to hit it. We have been at this since 1980, so we have a pretty good sense of what survives a North Carolina summer and what survives a salt truck.
If your parts are rusting, they are not cursed. They are just naked. We can fix that. Send us the part, the spec, and the quantity, and we will get them a coat that actually fights back.