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-----Equipment for Chrome Plating of Plastics
Q. I am interested in starting up a small finishing business, what I am trying to source right now is the type of machinery used for chroming plastic materials especially for automobiles. Can any one offer advice/suggestions?
Arlene Perez- Barataria, Trinidad, W.I.
2002
Q. I am a self-employed person who wants to go into the business of chroming and I am looking for a machine to do the work.
Emmanuel Cumberbatch- Castries, St. Lucia
2005
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.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
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