Plating

[Helly]

I'm having issues with plating that's wearing off jewellery too quickly. I've asked to increase to 1 micron and to use only hard gold. The response has been that they vacuum/PVD plate for 1.5 hrs and that using hard gold would not be as smooth. I've been told that PVD is really a gimmick.

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could throw some light on how many microns is achieved during 1.5 hrs plating and whether it would be best in terms of durability to just electroplate in hard gold rather than PVD. Also how can you test the quality of the plating? Thanks!