“In the second of a four-part feature on the gold-plated dCS Vivaldi One, we look at how it receives its immaculate finish… FH Lambert is the specialist electroplating company that does the sublime gold finish on the limited edition Vivaldi One. dCS chose them for the quality of the company’s work, which is done in low volumes and to aerospace standards. Managing Director Jamie Lambert explains that, “we are basically an aerospace company, what you would call an AS1900 company.”
That itself is a quality management system or framework built around the aerospace sector. In terms of our aesthetic, visual inspections, it is set at every process, every process step. It’s not a case of completing the work and then finding there’s an issue with it – the way we do it, every step of the way there is an intermediate inspection that it has to pass.”
Like cooking, it’s all in the preparation, says Jamie. “You have got to make sure that is all right and that isn’t easy, and it is a very skilled job. It’s something that we do and we train people here to do. You’ve got to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – and fortunately many people who work here do! It’s about understanding that quality makes our business. We are a tier two business; there are manufacturers like dCS and wider supply chains that sit above us. You could say, as a plating plant, ours is one of the cleanest you’d ever come across. We want to set a professional image about ourselves because we do get audited regularly by our customers. We get this all the time…”
When a dCS Vivaldi One part arrives at FH Lambert, it comes in a specially designed box which is padded to protect the component. “Then, they’re all unwrapped and accounted for”, says Jamie. “We book them all in on our system and everything is fully traceable. The part is not just received and plated, we have to build it as specified. The steps and sequence are all on the actual job card. We engrave a unique identification number on to the part, the reason for this being traceability. This is a huge thing in aerospace. Every step of the way we can always find where it is on the shop floor. Even if it goes back to the customer and, let’s say something happens later on, we can ask the customer to read back the identification number on the part (obviously we engrave it in an inconspicuous area which is not seen by the customer) and can pull out from our system when it was done, who it was done by, where did it go in the process. Effectively this means we can rebuild this part at a later date, in the exact same way as we did before.”
After this, the part is linished. “This basically when it is sanded, and the reason for this is to remove any machine tramlines or marks. Then it is polished on a spindle mop to a very high mirror finish. Once it passes inspection it is now jigged, then you clean the part and go through various etchers and cleaners. Then it is nickel plated – the nickel having been laid down on the surface it is then copper plated. The reason for this is copper is a very soft metal which you can polish very easily. Then it’s nickelled again and finally gold plated. Obviously, between these layers there is an inspection. Once it is gold plated it’s got to go through a final inspection and then it is wrapped in a special material that we use here which prevents scratching. Then they are inserted back into their boxes and returned to the customer – in this case dCS. So the Vivaldi One isn’t just dipped in gold, if you know what I mean!”