Patent ID: 8444841

Claim:
A partial plating method to selectively plate a region of a member, the method comprising the step of: providing a member to be plated, wherein the member is made of copper or copper alloy and wherein the member defines a positioning hole for positioning the region to be plated; contacting the member with a plating solution comprising gold and cobalt ions; conveying the member to be plated in the plating solution such that the positioning hole of the member is located outside a flow path of the plating solution; projecting a laser beam having a wavelength of 330 nm or more and 450 nm or less onto the region to be plated, wherein the laser beam is not absorbed by the plating solution; scanning the laser beam from a scanning start position in synchronization with the movement of the member being conveyed in the plating solution for a fixed period of time, and the laser beam is then returned to the scanning start position after the fixed period of time, wherein the positioning hole of the member is detected by a photoelectronic sensor in synchronization with movement of the member being conveyed in the plating solution; and applying hard gold plating onto the region of the member where the laser beam is projected.