Re: Chrome, gold plating, brush plating, vapor deposition

Posted by Troy Taylor On 2016/1/23 23:19:56

My first job out of High School back in the early 80's was manufacturing plastic with silver and Gold brilliant reflective coating.

We did use the Atmospheric Vacuum Vapor method.

After the plastic was loaded into the racking, we placed small candy cane shaped metals into coil electrodes. the canes were either gold or silver depending on the reflective colors we were running.

Once the vacuum was pulled down, we fired off the coil electrodes which instantly vaporized the metal cane and distributed it to anything within the Bell chamber.

The parts were immediately taken out of the rack and a paint coating was applied over the back to seal the metal.

This is the same process in which mirrors are made. Based on the way the emblems and gauges degrade over time, I would agree that most likely a metal based process was used.