How to put PVD on plastic without chrome plating first?

A. This is the holy grail that PVD coaters seek. It is possible to coat directly to ABS, but there are issues. First, the coating will be only as good as the finish, so the L value will be low directly on plastic (a Cu-Ni-Cr finish levels the imperfections of the plastic surface, increasing the L value for max brilliance). Also, the cost of sputtering the bond layer and applying the decorative PVD chemistry for the final finish is more costly than the plating-PVD route. There is a scheme where an organic finish is put down, followed by PVD, and then sealed by an organic finish. I believe this is the general scheme followed by a Goodrich Technology process called Permastar that you may want to search on the web.

A. Hi Joe. Well, vacuum metallizing with aluminum is a PVD process, and a decorative finish ... but probably not what you are looking for. This has been done for 50 years, but the performance on interior parts of 1960's and early 70's cars was so memorably miserable that it's reputation is hard to overcome :-)

I think the auto industry switched to real chrome plated plastic even for interior parts, let alone sticking with chrome plated ABS for the exterior parts.

Regards,