Preparing items for chrome plating

[hannemcnc]

Hi everyone,
I have been looking at the possibility of doing chrome plating at home but one of the biggest obstacles is the high current density required which sort of really puts it out of my league. (for the moment)

To get something chromed at a plating shop can be quite expensive as I can understand there is quite a lot of labour involved.

Stripping, sanding, building, resanding, rebuilding, polishing then on with the plating and more polishing. Lots of labour to pay for here. Pot metal parts especially.

I have looked at the copper and nickel plating kits and they don't look that difficult ( I know, I know that's easy to say!!) and don't require huge currents either. What do you think a plating shop would say if I walked up to them with a prepared part to get the chrome plate put on only??

If they were given a part that was prepared properly to a good standard do you think they would even be interested in dipping it? Not much money in it for them but not much labour either.

In my perfect world I would imagine them just giving the part a quick clean and chroming it quite quickly and handing it back to me. (short turnaround)

Give me your thoughts, is there anyone using this forum that works in a real plating shop?

Cheers M

[KCV6]

You may find a shop willing to do it, but they will tell you that if the part blisters or peels during the chroming process it will be your problem. Your best bet is to give them an item that is as straight and clean of defects as possible. This will reduce the cost if they are a good shop.

The shop I deal with for doing my chrome prefers to do the whole lot for this reason as it would be all too easy for a disgruntled customer to spread bad reports. I pay.. for example $20 for a motorcycle front axle (no prep by me), $50 for a heavy guage brackets (no prep by me) for them to do the whole lot. This is fine by me as I'm usually too busy doing the smaller detail stuff.

Cheers

Mark

[hannemcnc]

Yeah of course there would be no warranty and I would be happy with that and would be happy to sign the docket saying there is no comeback due to the pre prep work already done.

But I can see your point about being unhappy and spreading bad words about their business but I know that I personally would not if I had done most of the hard work myself, but I suppose how would they know that, they are not mind readers.

I think doing pot metal parts would be most beneficial if done this way as the labour to get some of these is high and therefore cost heaps to do. The only way I will really find out is to call up some plating shops and guage their feelings on the matter.

Would be looking at bumper bar sections, they come in 3 smaller pieces, pot metal grill sections, door handles, badges, steel grill sections generally old car stuff. Easily able to be set up at home size wise.

Bit of a background on me, I did my apprenticeship at a government factory and did 6 month rotations through different sections of this huge establishment and one of them was the plating shop. Now of I don't work there anymore and it will now be backyard stuff but I do know what goes on in plating shops, and what it takes prep wise to get an item in good enough condition to take a quality coat of chrome. Well as good as my memory anyway.


Cheers Michael

[constrand]

ill usually give a guy a discount for trying but ill do most of it over again, if they try to do the preponderance its usually just once after i tell the them the hole prep process