Spray Chrome

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hemitheus

19? Plymouth Scampenstein
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Is anyone familiar with these sprayable chrome systems that use chemicals and deionized water to operate that can advise me on a good source for these systems, supplies.

Is this just a de-ionizer and pressurized water sprayer and chemicals themselves do all of the magic?

I am looking into doing some side-work and need the ability to make plastic chromed. I'd rather not pay someone else to do this if it is something I can do in-house on my own.
 
In the digging I have done I have found few good details. Technically it is silver plating. A solution of silver nitrate (AgNO3) is sprayed on. This is then followed by a solution of sodium chloride (NaCl). The reaction causes the silver to separate from the nitrate and deposit on the surface.

But why the deionized water? Isnt this counterproductive to the NaCl?
 
i am very interested in your findings as i would like to try to do this myself good luck and i will keep reading
 
http://www.sprayonchrome.com/index2.html

This is the outfit, I saw them at PRI in 2010, looks pretty slick, but I don't think that the equipment is cheap. Since I live in the People's Rebublic of California, I can see a time when this may be the only method of chroming available here because of environmental issues with more conventional methods.
 
I believe the deionized water is part of the cleaning process and to make sure that no impurities (salts, metals, etc.) contaminate the finish. One of the magazines, Hot Rod or Car Craft maybe, did an article in 2010 that expalined the process fairly well.
 
The BASIC setup will run you a minimum of 8 grand. I have an intro DVD from SpectraChrome if you want it hemi. Sorry I don't have a winning lottery ticket to pass along with it. :-D
 
Yea I dug into this as well, the spectra chrome got some pretty bad reviews by customers, there was another as well, I have both of their dvd's as well.. never opened them.... I also heard claims that by the time the system is up and running correctly people were spending in the neighborhood of 20-35 grand.
 
Thats just comedic at those prices. You can "chrome" glass and ceramics in essentially just a silver nitrate bath. these machines cant be too different from that process. Hell, if I can find someone in the know enough about these I could build my own and just buy the AgNO3 and other essentials in bulk on my own.

i am going to try and hunt down that hot rod/car craft article and call my cousins wife who is an industrial chemist. Get to the bottom of this nonsense.

thanks all. Anyone else with knowledge feel free to chime in
 
i doubt spray on chrome holds up as good as real chrome to flying debris so typically kicked up by driving on crap roads
 
i doubt spray on chrome holds up as good as real chrome to flying debris so typically kicked up by driving on crap roads


But it is for plating plastic pieces. I would electro plate plastic or chrome powder coat it, if it worked.
 
It is the same process used to silver the back of every glass mirror you have stood in front of.

You can buy silvering supplies online from a couple of places.

The trick to the process is getting a clear coat over it very quickly after it has been silvered. A nice thick water clear polyurethane gives it great depth, and prevents tarnishing. I have seen glass mirrors that were made before WWII & were still bright, because the coating over the silver did not fail.

Commercial mirror silvering equipment uses a dual feed spray gun that mixes the chemistry as it travels to the glass. The companies selling the "systems" with the beverage containers are using the same guns.

There are pour over systems that will work for small items like emblems or plastic trim.

The silvering is only as durable as the clear coat over it. My dad did re-silvering of antique mirrors, and the most important part was getting the glass completely clean. With the current prices for silver, I imagine this is not cheap to do on any scale now.

B.
 
I always thought shiny coatings on plastic were done using "sputter deposition" using aluminum. I am thinking examples like shiny aluminized mylar birthday balloons and fancy wrapping paper.
 
Deionized water must be there to remove any salts that are produced in the process. Is there heating in the process? This would/could convert the silver chloride to silver. Also the sodium nitrate that is produced could be washed away with water. And the excess sodium chloride is washed away. Regular tap water contains other ions that you probably don't want to have when applying the coating. There is my two cents. I am only going off the couple things stated and have no knowledge of the process.
 
The process the OP is asking about is two silver nitrate solutions that are reactive. When mixed they will react & deposit pure silver on the surface, more or less a plating. Silver will tarnish if not protected. This is why mirrors are painted on the back side, and why the process he is asking about needs a clear coat.

The DI water is part of the rinsing process, so that the pure silver is ready for clear coating. You can't mechanically clean the silver after deposition - it must be coated without touching it.

When re-silvering glass mirrors we would pour the solutions from two beakers at the same time in the center of the glass. It would plate out instantly with fresh solution. The runoff would plate things for a while, but was not something you could use the next day.

Commercial mirrors are still silvered the same way (chemically) with the previously mentioned dual head spray system. Sputtering or vacuum deposition is used to make first surface mirrors or reflective glass.

FYI, injection moulded plastics can certainly be chrome electroplated, just like a car bumper. A plastic part is rubbed down with finely powdered copper to make it conductive. Then it is copper / nickel / chrome just like it was steel.

B.
 
In tests, I got a shiny surface using a spray can of Krylon Silver Foil Metallic, available at hardware stores. Much better than the old "bumper chrome", though not quite as shiny as real chrome. I tried on a plastic dash piece, after thoroughly removing the peeling chrome to bare plastic by soaking in Super Clean. The trick is to spray a very thin coat, as the can says.

However, I tested the cured surface by scuffing slightly w/ sandpaper and it quickly became dull, so I thought not permanent enough for the dash. It works best on surfaces that won't be touched, like making a mirror on the rear of acrylic sheet.

I ended up taking them to Sacramento Chrome who did all ~6 pieces for ~$110. They use some type of multi-component spray process as mentioned by others. He said he tried several systems, before settling on his current one and said it is more durable than the factory coating. Some of the previous systems brought a lot of customer returns.
 
It is the same process used to silver the back of every glass mirror you have stood in front of.

You can buy silvering supplies online from a couple of places.

The trick to the process is getting a clear coat over it very quickly after it has been silvered. A nice thick water clear polyurethane gives it great depth, and prevents tarnishing. I have seen glass mirrors that were made before WWII & were still bright, because the coating over the silver did not fail.

Commercial mirror silvering equipment uses a dual feed spray gun that mixes the chemistry as it travels to the glass. The companies selling the "systems" with the beverage containers are using the same guns.

There are pour over systems that will work for small items like emblems or plastic trim.

The silvering is only as durable as the clear coat over it. My dad did re-silvering of antique mirrors, and the most important part was getting the glass completely clean. With the current prices for silver, I imagine this is not cheap to do on any scale now.

B.
Great info... thanks

do you have a good lead on these 'pour over' systems?
 
wow, stretch? My initial thoughts are to question its durability, long term.
 
I´ve been studying this process for years now(with some hand on experience) and I´ll be glad to teach you all I know, I´ll be starting a very small business here in Nicaragua, mostly to chrome small plastic parts, and I´ll grow as the business grows..

In the digging I have done I have found few good details. Technically it is silver plating. A solution of silver nitrate (AgNO3) is sprayed on. This is then followed by a solution of sodium chloride (NaCl). The reaction causes the silver to separate from the nitrate and deposit on the surface.
you almost got it there.. but not quite there yet.. you see the chemicals need to be mix at the same time to maximize results

But why the deionized water? Isnt this counterproductive to the NaCl?
Deionized water or distilled water are used because the water to be use need to be pure or very very low in solids and other chemicals that may interact with the chemestry.. example, tap water usualy has some degree of chlorine and even if left in the outside for 2 days the amount of Chloride Ions is too much. what happens when you mix silver nitrate with tap water? a white cloud that precipitate to the bottom, and that´s because silver chloride(the mixture of silver nitrate and chloride ions) has low solubility in water. It likes to precipitate out of solution as a white precipitate


Thats just comedic at those prices. You can "chrome" glass and ceramics in essentially just a silver nitrate bath. these machines cant be too different from that process.
that's exactly what I thought when I was first doing my research.

Hell, if I can find someone in the know enough about these I could build my own and just buy the AgNO3 and other essentials in bulk on my own.
you can bouild your own with little money, but its a PITA to hunt donw the chemicals and then takes practice to mix them, but that´s not the issue here, the issue is trying to mix each chemicals with accuracy each time you do it. this is very frustrating because at first when you start experimenting with this process there is so many variables(purity of watter, purity of compressed ait, purity of base coat, purity of clear coat, too much chemicals, not enough chemicals) I got very frustrated at first trying to mix my own chemicals, so I decided to buy alrady pre mixed silvering chemicals(that alone eliminated lots of variables, and helped me norrow what was causing my troubles)

i am going to try and hunt down that hot rod/car craft article and call my cousins wife who is an industrial chemist. Get to the bottom of this nonsense.
at this stage is this is not a good idea, nothing worst than a disapointed first try..

thanks all. Anyone else with knowledge feel free to chime in

Stay tuned I´ll be teaching you how to create your own with off the shelf parts so you can spray on chrome small items..
 
Ok... here I go(keep in mind that this is as simple as it gets, if you want to try this out with a bigger equipment its gonna cost you more and you will be adding more variables that can affect you)

I got the Idea from Old Time mirror makers, they used two hald held had triggers to spray the chemicals into the glass to make a mirror, its a good idea but not a practical one, it takes both hands to do it and you need to coordinate both hands at the same time and not all hand triggers are made the same... that was true untill a 2 part chemical triggers came into market...

it wasn´t untill Alsa Corp came up with their own Spray On Chrome Pump Fx system that I decided to built my own, just to test how good their chemicals are and how well they compared to off the shelf parts..(previously I had built an small spray on chrome system with home made silvering spray gun, made from two guns)

here is Alsa chrome Fx
http://www.alsacorp.com/products/chromefx/

cromeFXpump.jpg


continues in next post...
 
that looks nice uh? well its too expencive and it gives you very little to practise.. so what we do about it? we build a similar kit with off the shelf parts

we here the off the shelf alternatives
first we need a hand trigered sprayer that can spray 2 chemicals at the same time(equal amount of chemicals) fortunately for us Alsa is not the owner of this patent either either.

I bought this Dual Chamber from this page
http://www.excelsuppliesonline.com/browse.cfm/dual-chamber-sprayer-for-stain-magic/4,2059.html

DualChambers1.jpg


ok that was the hand sprayer to spray the Silver to our small plastic surface. the stannous chloride sensitizer solution can be applied by a normal hand sprayer

now to the spray on chrome chemicals... or spray on "Silver" chemicals(that´s what they trully are, a silver diamine complex [Ag(NH3)2]+ reacting to a reducer)

so far this are the least expencive I know of(peacock labs sell mirror chemicals but they are about 60% more expencive and they don´t sell the small quantities we need)

the chemicals I got them from
http://angelgilding.com/SpraySilver.html

silvering chemicals, will cover 133 sq/f(lots for practicing)
SprayOnSilverChemicals1.jpg


the Sensitizer
Sensitizer1.jpg


now to the base coat clear coat.
I have tried just about every kind of paint there is(lacquer, anamel, catalized enamel, urethane, Polyurethane, even some oil base paints) and the best ones are 2k Urethane of a good grade. you can use clear both as basecoat and clear coat. the clear needs to be of a crystalline transparency because if its not, it could dull the silvered parts..

another thing I´ll be testing is the Pour on Silvering, instead of spraying it
SiphonTable.jpg


here is a video of them doing it..
<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6F8Q5yxqy90" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe>
 
Updates....

well guys I received my packages(about 2 weeks ago) but I was not able to test them untill recently

here a few pics of the packages

Stain Magic dual chambered hand sprayer(to spray silvering chemicals)
StainMagic.jpg


now Alsa Spray On Chrome Fx Pum sprayer vs stain magic sprayer(the face off)
StainMagicVSchromeFXpump1.jpg


not related to this topic, but I will also be testing Alsa new Stretch Chrome film.
StretchChrome1.jpg


Also not related to this topci, but I will also be testing Innate Chrome paint(with their protective clear)
InnateChrome1.jpg
 
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