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DIY brush plating of automotive parts
Hello... I was at the SEMA auto show a couple of weeks ago and there was 2-3 companies selling a brush plating set-up. The prices varied wildly ! Is there a simple way to home-build one of these? I am not interested in doing this as a full time business, only on some of my own items I sell at the swap meet. It would be nice if it was portable thanks for your help....Chris
Chris Morley-----
Hello Chris. One thing to realize is that of all plating jobs, perhaps the only "easy" one is replating car emblems, so this is what they will usually demonstrate at shows. The reason it's so easy, besides the fact that the emblems are small, is that you are starting with an item that already has a very high quality OEM plating job on it, 99 percent of which you're leaving just as is :-)
All you're doing is removing a few millionths of an inch of chrome from the top and replacing it with a few millionths of an inch of gold, relying on the beautiful pre-existing nickel plating to deliver the shine.
The polishing, the buffing, the cleaning, the activating, the copper plating, the semi-bright nickel plating, the bright nickel plating (all the hard stuff) was already done for you! If all you want to do is replace the chromium topcoat on previously plated parts with gold, there isn't much to it, and probably any cheap equipment will offer you a good shot.
But starting from raw metal, plating may not be as easy as it looked :-(
- A lot of technical knowledge is required to deposit a bright plate that will not peel off. It's usually many layers of different plating. For starters you need to know the metallurgy of the parts to be plated (you can't plate zinc diecastings, aluminum, stainless steel, cast iron, or previously painted or plated parts without specialized prep cycles). It is possible to do quality brush plating, but some of the cheap kits and chemicals you see mass marketed, and the techniques suggested, will produce junk that peels right off if you're not starting with a part that's already well plated, and getting brightness isn't easy.
- Some of the chemicals required for plating are dangerous, aggressive, and regulated; and you may need a license, although the EPA does not seem to actually bother home platers.
You may wish to buy or borrow the book Electrochemical Metallizing by Marv Rubinstein, which is the bible of brush plating, or to contact such manufacturers of quality brush plating equipment as Gold Touch [Cleveland, OH], LDC [Cleveland, OH], and Sifco [Independence, OH]. Good luck!
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