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world gathers for metal finishing
Q&As since 1989


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SO, JUST HOW MANY CHROME SHOPS ARE IN THE U.S.

Hello ,

I'm doing a little research and seems that in the United States they are very few chrome plating shops compared to the people that want something plated. I would like to find out just how many plating shops are located in the United States and if possible how many are dec. as compared to hard chrome . My father gets lots of car parts plated and its very hard to find one thats not backed up for months so just out of curiosity we thought we would see if we could find this out. We checked with the E.P.A. website but didn't find anything. Thanks for the help.

William Brown
- Durham, North Carolina
2003

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At one point the EPA estimated that there were 7000 plating jobshops in the U.S., but such questions are difficult to answer for many reasons. If you asked how many ships & boats there are in the U.S., estimates would vary by more than an order of magnitude depending on whether sunfish, kayaks and toy inflatables are counted or you set the lower limit at, say, 125 HP 18 footers. Likewise, no one knows how many people have a beaker of chromic acid in their garage or basement or something else short of a recognizable plating shop

The next problem with the question is that there are captive shops who do only their own work, and there are jobshops who will work only for industry. And there are shops who own a chrome plating tank but only operate it when one of their major customers has work for them.

How many shops offer decorative chrome plating to the public? Wild guess: 500 and falling.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2003

Thanks Ted , Do you know of a website where we could get a general list of the registered plating shops in the United States. I'm sure they are lots out there that we don't know exist and could probably send some work their way.

William Brown
- NC
2003

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We have a list of many shops who make this site possible (just click the 'Jobshops' button below); competitive metal finishing portals have their lists; A.E.S.F. has a printed list of many shops; Thomas Register has an on-line and printed list; environmental groups intent on closing down plating shops have published their lists based on OSHA Right-to-Know submissions; those are probably the most exhaustive of the lists. But we like to think that you don't need a list of 7000 shops because you couldn't possibly investigate them all, and that investigating the list of our supporting advertisers will take all the time you want to spend :-)

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2003