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Old 01-13-2019, 08:55 AM
Jon Thompson Jon Thompson is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Missouri
Posts: 91
Default My 2 Cents

I have repaired parts for platers in the past and have gotten an inside view on the plating process. I have only worked with four polishers/platers in the past 33 years in business. Here is my knowledge and experience with the plating process as a consumer. I am not a plater. We have recently switched to Custom Chrome Plating in Grafton Ohio. The longest relationship was with Matt at J and R in western Massachusetts. Matt is a polisher. He regularly has his plating on Pebble Beach automobiles and has a vast knowledge of the plating process. As it has been explained to me in laymen terms. Copper, the copper plate is the first plate applied, we send all of our plated parts to be stripped and returned to us first, we cut, shape, tweek and weld until we get a nice fit, for instance a bumperette to a bumper face bar, then we finish the the bare steel (in this example) to a 150-180 grit. The part(s) are shipped back to the plater and he reduces the surface profile scratch (150 grit) to at least 320 grit. The parts are then placed in the copper tank where copper ingot is suspended in a fluid and charged negative and the suspended parts are charged positive. The electrical current causes the copper to migrate to the positive charged parts. If we are shooting for a crazy fit up we ask for an over flash and feather edge, that happens when the time spent (and other aspects of the plating process such as but not limited to, positioning, are considered). The parts are sent back to us and we use the overplate to fit plated parts to an eventual painted surface or another plated surface by profiling via sanding the edge to fit the mating part. Here's where the science takes a back seat to art, triple plate is about .014" thick so we are careful not to create an air tight fit as it is almost always on a radius and too tight a fit will cause a part to have too small of a radius. After the fit up the parts are sent back to the plater block sanded, prepared and polished. I have been told it's the copper polish you see. The people I have trusted and repaired parts for have told me it's the copper polish you see. The time spent on and in the nickle and chrome tanks are just a fraction of the time and effort spent on and in the copper tanks for triple plate custom chrome. It's science and art.
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