Where the
world gathers for metal finishing
Q&As since 1989


-----

Getting started in chrome electroplating

Good day, My name is Hennie Bresler, I live in Pretoria South Africa and I am searching for information on a startup electroplating shop. I am currently employed full time but intend early retirement within 2 years. I am building a holiday home at the coast and would like to operate a small business to keep me occupied there and also make some money while doing this. I am a keen modeler and have started building a working steam engine. I'm also rebuilding a classic motorcycle (which includes chromium plating). Chromium businesses are in short supply and more so where I intend retiring at the coast, also their end products are very expensive. At the coast there is a big demand for galvanized protection of outdoor metal and this too is a possibility. The finishing industry is very tight lipped and I am not able to get information. Seems quite simple as an observer (a few big plastic tanks, solution, electric current and hey presto!). Please help to dispel this image and assist with some real hard information regarding the setup of a production line albeit at a small scale. I have noted the reference to the electroplating engineering literature and will obviously have to get myself a copy at the soonest. Regards to all, Hennie

Hennie Bresler
- Garsfontein,Pretoria, South Africa
2007

---

Thank you for the inquiry, cousin Hennie. Please start with our Introduction to Chrome Plating. It's not my intention to be curt, but preemptive -- because the same question has been asked here a hundred times. And each time that it is, people come out of the woodwork to accuse everyone in this industry of being secretive about our "quite simple" but "very expensive" products.

You are at a website open to the world without registration, where information is shared via a public forum with 60,000+ threads of conversation, book recommendations & reviews, a calendar of industry events from around the world, a tutorial about chromium plating, FAQs, links to all the organizations and educational societies in the industry, an on-line library in multiple languages, an open invitation to visit specialty metal finishing libraries, and hundreds of experts who share their knowledge freely, all yours for the taking -- yet your initial impression is that the main problem is that "the finishing industry is very tight lipped" :-)

The problem is not secrecy: the problem is that an art and science that people have labored their whole careers in cannot be summarized in a paragraph or two. Safely using highly regulated carcinogenic chemicals to achieve what has been described as "one of the most complex unit operations known, because of the unusually large number of critical elementary phenomena or process steps which control the overall process" simply isn't easy. Imagine asking for simple cook-book instructions on how to perform an appendectomy, or fly a 747, or do an inside pass on the track at 205 mph if you had no experience in those areas? Read a book or two on the subject from our "must-have booklist", then feel free to ask any specific question you like and I predict that you'll see no secrecy. Good luck!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007

---

2007

If your wife will not kill you, take your next vacation and work for nothing in your largest city in a plating choice of your desire. Galvanize is not a plating process, chrome is.
Plating is a combination of book knowledge, science, knowledgeable observation, proper preparation of the substrate, laboratory maintained chemical solutions and witchcraft.
If you start a plating business and it does well, it will own you 7 days a week. Good hired help is very difficult to find and if you find some, in two years they will leave you to start their own business, and you are back at ground zero.
Been there and done that.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

---

Good answers, Ted and James. Save them for the inevitable daily inquiry, "How do I do plating in 100 words or less?".

Jeffrey Holmes, CEF
Spartanburg, South Carolina
2007