Equipment for Chrome Plating of Plastics

A. Hi folks. You could certainly do something like offering gold re-plating services for emblems and insignia that are presently chromed. This can be done without a major investment and with a portable machine, but real chrome plating is a very expensive, very complicated process -- the more so if the substrate is plastic.

The separate steps include, as a bare minimum, etching of the plastic to give it profile and tooth, activating it with palladium chloride, accelerating with tin chloride, electroless nickel plating, copper plating, semi-bright nickel plating, bright nickel plating, and chromium plating with a rinse (and preferably 2-3) in between each process. Twenty separate vats would be the minimum, thirty would be common. This is not so much a "machine" you buy, as a factory you build and an enterprise you enter after acquiring some years of plating experience working for someone else. Please see our "Introduction to Chrome Plating". Good luck.