auto emblems chromeor nickel & other black krome questions- I know nothing

[cwa]

Hi,

I work in a body shop in a small town in Colorado. I have an 06 Chrysler 300C & want to black chrome all the chrome. We've experimented with adhesion promoters & tinted clear coats. Its been easy to achieve the color I want, but adhesion is another matter. Someone mentioned electroplating kits, and here I am.

Are the chrome parts (window trim, grill, emblem, belt molding, mirrors) chrome or nickel plated plastic . I'm asking because in the Black Krome descriptions, it states the chrome plating must be stripped first.

Should I be looking at brush or immersion plating? What are the advantages/disadvantages/suggested methods I should use?

There are a few parts that I'm not sure how they would react to be immersed in an electroplating solution:

Parts that are part rubber & part chromed plastic (window moldings)
My grill is partly chromed & partly painted- would immersion plating plate the chrome part only?

Can a person purchase a kit & with a little practice produce good results? Or am I expecting too much?

Thanks for your time, I have never seen or heard of this before today.

Chad

[Brintiff]

I don't know what is used to plate the parts but I would assume they are chrome and not nickel. Brush plating will not work in your application, the parts are too big. I think the issue you are going to have is the size of your parts, even the largest kit which is four gallons is not large enough for a grill. Your second issue is going to be the learning curve, plating plastics is not easy and not a very good place to start. You cannot plate over the chromed plastic so you'd have to strip it, to rechrome it you'd need to buy the conductive paint, then you'd need a copper plate on top of that. If I had to make a guess I'd say you'd be close to the $1000 range in equipment and baths. You'd need to purchase a power supply, you'd have to measure the square inches of your parts to determine what size you need. If you are interested in plating by all means buy a kit and learn but trying to buy everything to do what you want to do is going to be a bad financial decision, someone could do it for you for less money than you'd spend and then you also wouldn't be putting a few hundred hours (at a minimum) learning how to plate.

I don't offer Black Krome so I have no incentive to recommend farming your job out. I don't even know anyone who does it, doesn't seem very popular around here.