CEN/TC 262/WG 13 - Simultaneous thickness and electrode potential (STEP) measurement

This document specifies a quantitative method for the measurement of adhesive strength of metallic and other inorganic coatings applied to metallic, polymer and glass substrates.
Typical coatings for which this document applies are metallic coatings such as aluminium, copper, nickel, nickel plus chromium, silver, tin, tin-nickel alloys, zinc, gold as well as other inorganic coatings such as oxides or nitrides, e.g. of aluminium, indium and indium-tin, silicon, niobium, titanium, tungsten, zirconium and others.
This document does not apply to certain hot dip, spray and mechanical coatings, for which other standards may apply, e.g. EN ISO 14916 or EN ISO 4624.
The measurement is valid if the cohesion and adhesion properties of the adhesive are higher than those of the coating subjected to test.

ISO 2819:2017 specifies methods of checking the adhesion of electrodeposited and chemically deposited coatings. It is limited to tests of a qualitative nature.
ISO 2819:2017 does not describe certain tests that have been developed at various times to give a quantitative measure of adhesion of metallic coating to a substrate, since such tests require special apparatus and considerable skill in their performance which renders them unsuitable as quality control tests for production parts. Some of these quantitative tests can, however, be useful in research and development work.

This European Standard applies to the measurement of the thickness of the individual nickel layers in electroplated multilayer nickel coatings and to the measurement of the potential differences between the individual nickel layers in electroplated multilayer nickel coatings.
The measurement of coatings or layer systems other than electroplated multilayer nickel coatings is outside the scope of this European Standard.