This question takes many different forms: some people have the
very specific idea that they want to gold plate brass buttons or
chrome plate carburetors; others want to be able to plate anything.
Some want to do it once to repair an heirloom, or a few times as a
hobby; others want to do it as a small business. Most want to start
in their basement or garage; only a few want to do it in a properly
designed factory.

There are a few types of plating that are relatively easy, for
example, gold plating of auto emblems. Why is this fairly easy? It’s
not only because the parts are small but because, even after the
replating, you are relying on the factory plating job for all of the
corrosion resistance and most of the appearance. These emblems were
polished and buffed, copper plated, plated with two heavy layers of
high quality nickel, then flashed with chrome at the factory. All you
are doing is removing the chrome flash and replacing it with a gold
flash. The original plater solved the preparation problems, any
adhesion issues, and the corrosion resistance problem; the original
plater provided the smoothness and shininess that makes the gold
plating look good. There is a gigantic difference between starting
with a beautifully nickel plated emblem and starting with a raw
casting :-)

Here are some letters about garage, basement, and backyard
plating:

18,
285,
545,
854,
1298,
1432,
1974,
2654,
2869,
4009,
4125,
19726. search the site for dozens
more.

With the exception of plating some simple things like jewelry or car emblems, it is expensive to get into the plating business. And it is foolish to mess around without adequate knowledge, in a business where many have been killed or seriously hurt (and dozens have been sent to jail). Please treat as quackery any promise that plating is easy.

For those who want an heirloom plated, you can look up ‘plating’ in the Yellow Pages for a local large city, or see www.finishing.com/shops/ for a list of plating shops, or post an RFQ. Plating is a jobshop oriented business, and you don’t have to plate it yourself if you don’t want to.

For those who want to do plating as a hobby or a very casual business, please think carefully; due to the inherent hazards in working with toxic materials, and the ecological and legal problems of dealing with the inevitable waste products, plating isn’t a great hobby, and is very heavily regulated as a business (even innocuous rinse water is regulated as hazardous waste).

For those considering plating as a real
business, please join us, this industry needs new blood —
but do it with your eyes open.

A Quick Science Lesson

First, a couple of paragraphs of easy science. Part of the
quackery you may hear is that you can just ‘dip’ the parts. This
would be like reporcelaining your sink without even moving or washing
the dirty dishes that are sitting in it. It is nonsense. Plated
coatings require metallurgical bonds: if the plating is not to
blister off when the item is put into service, the plated coating
must atomically bond to the surface. This means that the surface
metal must be utterly free of oils, grease, wax, rust, tarnish, and
passivity. There is no good way to do this except to clean the parts
in very strong hot caustic cleaners and then acid pickle them
immediately before plating.

When something is ‘chrome plated’, sometimes it means cleaned,
etched, activated, palladium-tin plated, electroless copper plated,
electrolytic copper plated, semi-bright nickel plated, bright nickel
plated, and THEN chromium plated — with multiple rinses between each
set of steps. Many plating processes require post-treatment steps
after plating as well. It can be rather involved, usually requiring
at least 15 different vats of chemicals and sometimes as many as 50,
to do just a single finish on a single type of material. We have an
FAQ on line that explains this by describing the steps in
chrome plating in detail.

The Politics of Plating

Next, the politics: the electroplating jobshop industry was the
country’s very first EPA-regulated activity; the first industry for
which “categorical standards” were issued. What that means, somewhat
simplified, is that all waste products, no matter how innocuous, are
“categorically” hazardous waste for which you are responsible
forever, no matter how much you pay for disposal. Part of this was
probably due to the fact that it is easier to intimidate Mom &
Pop shops than giant corporations; but part of it is the reality that
plating inherently involves strong acids, caustic soda (lye),
chromium, heavy metals, and cyanide. Multi-million dollar aquifer
cleanups have been necessitated by leaks from very small plating
shops. And it is impossible to go from one step of the plating
process to the next without copious rinsing. What will you do with
that rinse water as it grows too strong to use any longer

Don’t Even THINK About Chrome Plating At
Home

Plating involves dangerous chemicals, some of them carcinogenic,
some of them rapid acting and powerful poisons. Lethal gases can be
easily released if you don’t know what you are doing. If the process
demands cyanide, chromic acid or hydrofluoric acid, would you have
these in your house or garage? I wouldn’t have them in mine, I
promise you.

If you will accept that it isn’t easy, that you’re not going to do
it in a residential environment, and that you’ll need to learn a lot
first, then . . .

Here’s How To Get Started:

• First, attend a local branch meeting of the
  American Electroplaters and Surface
  Finishing Society. Find a branch near you, then contact the
  secretary (or whoever the designated contact for that branch is,
  as shown on the web page). He or she will give your directions,
  last minute updates, etc., and will probably volunteer to
  introduce you around on meeting night. Guests are always welcome,
  and you’ll meet a cross section of specifiers, platers, vendors,
  and consultants and academics. This is an individual membership
  society, so you will find it very affordable to join if/when you
  wish.

• Second, get your hands on some books. As a minimum, get two or
  three from our ‘must-have’ list.
  After reviewing them, you may want to get another one or two on
  the specifics that interest you.

• Third, if a local library doesn’t have them, subscribe to some
  of the trade journals and periodicals serving the industry, such
  as Metal Finishing
  magazine,
  Products
  Finishing magazine,
  Plating & Surface
  Finishing, and Transactions of The Institute of Metal
  Finishing.

• Fourth, give strong consideration to a hands-on training
  course in plating. Three excellent sources are the
  AESF, the IMF, and
  Kushner Electroplating
  School.

• Fifth, after you’ve begun to acquire a general feel for what
  plating is about, please come back to
  www.finishing.com and we’ll try to
  help you with the next steps.

• But whatever you do, don’t start buying any chemicals until
  you know what you are doing! Even if you don’t really use them,
  you are responsible for them forever.

We’re working hard to make these pages the place you come to for all
your finishing needs. Please e-mail your suggestions to:

Ted Mooney, P.E.
<finishingdotcompublic@gmail.com>