A guide to re-chrome plastic car parts.

Chrometech at Castle Hill, the people doing the re-chroming of some parts for a "41 60 coupe.Our customer previously used Chrometech, for electroplating the very badly pitted headlight trim strips and wiper towers on his '39 and they still look great some 5 years later.Not a mark, blemish or pit on the pieces.

Suffice to say Chrometech can re-chrome just about anything. There are somethings we don't chrome-plate , pieces that are in too poor condition even for Walter's magic skills.

Our process is very labour intensive. Depending on condition we have to soak the dashes or other parts in solvent to remove the grease.It may need a highfill. After highfill we need to sand back again. Then dashes need to be taped up in the rear and electrodes are inserted. Now it goes into the spray room and a conductive paint is applied. Tape will need to be removed, electrodes are connected for subsequent electroplating.After an 8 hour electroplating process in the copper, the dash gets rinsed and then nickel plated for an hour. Now it gets rinsed and then chrome-plated. We only leave parts in the chrome tank for 5 minutes, rinse and dry. The wires are cut off and the job is ready.

Re-chroming spa nozzles and shower taps

We have a lot of customers frantically looking to re-chrome either spa nozzles or taps. As you know we not only bronze baby shoes but bronze, chrome-plate, nickel -plate any materials such as plastic, fibreglass, wax, wool, and anything that is NOT METAL.

Below is an e-mail from a customer: Hi I have searched Australia for replacement cover plates and nozzles for our spa jets and they don't make them anymore and no one has any chrome look ones. They are plastic but look like they have been coated in a gold (look?) finish. I can send some photos to see if you are able to re-chrome these. We want to sell the house and are desperate to have these match all the other fittings in the bathroom. I have 12 of these 40mm cover plates and 12 x 10mm nozzles that fit inside the cover plates. If you could re-chrome these, how much roughly do you think they will cost.

Best regards S.I

Did you know that we also cater for bathroom renovators who want their plastic taps and fittings re-chromed.
A big part of our business is to chrome-plate plastic and fibreglass dashboards, grills, mirrors, door handles and anything that is NOT metal
One of our customers inquired if we can bronze a blade of grass. The grass was where he met his fiancee 1o years ago.
Nothing surprises us anymore, but the imagination certainly went wild at exactly why people want things chrome plated..
We bronzed wedding lingerie,lace on wedding dresses, body parts and even covered dim sums in 24 k gold. As well as helping artists with sculptures we assist people who want to preserve and protect their keepsakes and heirlooms to turn them into keepsakes. It's all about eternalising a moment in time.
The Bronzing Studio has also restored and covered objects tied to people leaving Earth, including a pair of sunglasses owned by Elvis Presley, but now the property of a collector of Elvis memorabilia. We also silverplated a rose from Elvis's casket.
People have asked to electroplate half-eaten hamburgers, doughnuts, computer games, jeans and dog collars. A director from the crematorium asked us if we could bronze a chicken leg, in an investigation into whether human bodies will be able to be preserved
in the future. Technically we could preserve a human body, but it is morbid and imagine the licences you'd need.

Chroming|Chrome Plating

Chroming|Chrome Plating

How to chrome-plate on plastic car parts.

Is it possible to chrome-plate anything? Basically Chrometech can electroplate anything. We can also coat every conceivable base material in a metal of your choice.
The trick with the various materials is in the pre-treatment. The items to be chrome-plated needs to be sealed if it is of a porous nature. Items made of wax, PP or PE requires a special primer prior to coating the item with a conductive layer.
Preparation of the surface is critical as a chrome-plated finish will show up and expose any imperfections. As we said in the beginning we can electroplate anything. The question is: Has the item been engineered for the electroplating process?
In many cases, the dash boards and grills that we receive have not been designed for electroplating. This requires compromises in order to achieve a relative good outcome. For example we may not want to plate the whole item. As such we will only selectively plate the areas that we can be sure will be sufficiently covered with metal to obtain a brilliant shinny surface. In the case of some of the front grills where the louvers are too wide we will recommend not electroplating the bottom side of the louvers and selectively plate only the top that is seen. This will allow more chrome onto the surface where it is required. Needless to say this requires a lot of taping up prior to making the surface conductive. In order to avoid plating on the tape which is also made conductive, we must remove the tape prior to electroplating. This may explain why the costs are somewhat higher than plating on metal. The same item made of metal may require max 1 hour to have an A-1 class job performed on it. In the case of plating on plastic with our process a grill is normally plated for 12 hours at a low current so that we can achieve a uniform deposition of copper, nickel and chrome across the whole grill.
To compensate for the lack of adhesion with this process and to promote the durability, a thick coat of copper, nickel and chrome is necessary. The average thickness of the plating on a grill is 0.2mm compared to 0.02 – 0.03mm (considered a very thick coat) with the conventional plating on steel process.
There are such things as internal anodes that can be made to order for a particular job. These however are extremely expensive and as such are not practical. Chrometech developed its own conductive sensitising media including the various primers. Variations of the conductive media and primers need to be fully understood in order to apply them on the many different types of items that we receive.

Resurrected Austin A 30

Nobody thought it possible to resurrect this Austin A 30 grill. It looked like it was ready to be buried. It was completely rusted through.
When I say rusted I mean rusted. The holes in the previously chromed grill were up to 5mm or more in diameter and some of the metal was paper thin.
There was no chrome to be seen on the grill and I assume some bloody electroplater left it in the strip too long and stripped the hell out of it.
As chrome-plated Austin A 30 grills are not easily available, the customer didn't have much of a choice and availed himself of Chrometech's service.
Chrometech re-structured and fortified the grill with resin and fiberglass, filled the holes with putty, high-filled it, rubbed it back and proceeded
with the activating process prior to chrome-plating the now mostly non conductive grill. The end result was unbelievable.The chrome-plated
Austin A 30 was featured in a car magazine and was brought back to life. If you want to see a picture, contact Chrometech on 02 98999122

A car fit for a King

This RX7 has undergone a five year conversion into a brilliant piece of art. "Jealous Ahura" the name of the car was flown from Malaysia (Apparently the car belongs to a crown prince of Indonesia)
to participate at the Motor ex held in Sydney on July 11th and 12th. It was the first time that an an International car took part in the exhibition. The car has 10.000 Swarovski crystals encrusted, even in wheels you can find crystals. The car
is worth about $ 250.000. All the interior plastic car parts were chrome-plated by Chrometech.
At the show you could find hot rods, street machines,all American car, motorbikes. An auction was held on Sunday. We at Chrometech also participated and had a great response. A lot of people were impressed with the electroplated fiberglass for the hot rods. This opens a market and can add value from just the fiberglass parts to a shinning pride. A lot of cars were at the exhibition that had the parts chrome-plated by Chrometech. If it's good enough for the Prince to use the services of Chrometech, we must talk quality electroplating