Questions about Chrome Plating?

'Chrome'

Chrome provides the "Best Bang for your Manufacturing Buck" it is the most durable decorative finish on the market and has unsurpassed qualities for wear and corrosion resistance. To this day no other type of plating provides the decorative qualities with the added benefits of exceptional wear and corrosion resistance that has withstood the tests of time in all markets from Automotive and Aerospace to Medical and Household. Chrome is in almost everything from the car you drive to the silverware at your dinner table.

What is Chrome?

Chrome is slang for Chromium. One of the 92 naturally occurring elements. Chrome is a metal but it is not useful as a solid pure substance. Things are never made of solid Chrome. When something is reffered to as chrome what is really meant is that there is a thin layer of chrome or a plated layer of chrome on the object.

Occasionally other finishes are confused with chrome finishes. People sometimes call any shiny finish chrome such as brightly polished aluminum, polished stainless steel, vacuum metalized objects such as plastic glasses, helmets and balloons.

These finishes may look to the Lay-Person as chrome like but when compared side by side to decorative chrome the other finish usually will not compare favorably. When wear and corrosion resistance are compared the other finish will fall far short of holding up as well as decorative chrome.

Chrome plating is also brighter and more reflective than other finishes and more specular.

Done properly chrome is like a mirror. Put one end of a yardstick up against a bright chrome finish, and see how many inches of numbers you can read clearly in the reflection. There is also a hard to define glint to top quality chrome that no other finish has.

Decorative Chrome Plating

Decorative chrome plating is sometimes called nickel-chrome plating because it always involves electroplating nickel onto the object before plating the chrome. Certain substrates will also require copper plating prior to nickel-chrome plating such as zinc die cast objects.

Properly preparing the object prior to nickel-chrome plating by polishing the surface is key to top quality mirror chrome finishes. The smoother or more polished the object is prior to plating the more mirror like the final plated finish will be.

Nickel plating after the polishing process also helps provide smoothness or leveling of the plated surface it also provides much of the corrosion resistance and most of the reflectivity. The chrome plating over the top of the nickel is exceptionally thin and is measured in millionths of an inch rather than thousandths.

When you look at a decorative chrome plated wheel or bumper most of what you are seeing in the finish is the effects of the nickel plating. The chrome adds a bluish cast to the finish and protects the nickel against tarnish, minimizes scratching and symbiotically contributes to corrosion resistance. Without the brilliant leveled nickel undercoating you would not have a decorative reflective finish.

Colored Chrome

There are only two colors of chrome, the standard color we all are familiar with and black chrome.

Additional top-coats can be applied to chrome to change the color such as a process called Physical Vapor Deposition. Variations of this process can be applied to decorative chrome to achieve a full range of colors from black to gold while maintaining the desired properties of decorative chrome plating such as reflectivity, wear and corrosion resistance. Unfortunately this process can add considerable cost to producing the desired decorative finish.