Need Chrome plating supplies for new business

A. Hi, Joe.

Suppliers of such equipment and chemistry are listed in our directories of advertisers, which you can reach from the "buttons" below. If you know what components and chemicals you are looking for, I think you'll have vendors knocking on your door to sell them to you. But chrome plating process lines are customized affairs, they are not standard products like an automobile. You need to bring knowledge to the table along with your money.

If you don't know quite what you are looking to buy, and aren't able to explain what your wastewater treatment system looks like, and who you have contracted to do sludge hauling, etc., vendors fear that you also don't know enough about all the environmental permits you need and the safety rules. The very last thing a vendor ever wants is a phone call from EPA that a drum of waste chemicals has been found with their name on the drum. Sorry, but most suppliers are dismissive towards a small startup in today's regulatory environment.

Unless you have a world of free time, I think retaining a consultant can be the best idea. But powder coating is a very environmentally friendly technology, and probably a better first step than chrome plating. Good luck!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Dear Josh!

You can buy small chrome plating kit for less then 2000 USD-but you must know that chrome plating is dangerous process--for you and for environment.

Goran Budija
- Cerovski vrh Croatia
2004

A. Step 1 is to check with your local, state and federal EPA folks. The requirements for even a tiny chrome plating setup are tough. You will have to have a fume scrubber to legally plate. This scrubber must be tested before you startup. This test is about $5,000 per test. Next is waste treatment: very expensive and all of your tanks including rinse tanks are considered hazardous waste material. Disposal runs over $500 per drum. You need a generators permit before you start. Typical fines for even minor labeling violations are $500 to $5000 per offense per day. There is a great amount of technique in chrome plating. Where do you plan to learn this? For decorative chrome, you will need a duplex nickel undercoat. If it will require buffing, you will want a copper first layer. You will need a rudimentary laboratory to control each of the tanks. Are you a chemist or a technician? In short, plating is not a suitable hobby and chrome plating is a terrible hobby. You have a very very tiny probability of making a buck. Existing chrome plating shops are going out of business every month.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

A. There are numerous suppliers of kits for decorative chrome plating for the hobbyist or small shop. I have chromed parts for some of my trucks and older cars. It is hazardous materials, but if you really want to try plating (chroming) on a small scale, I have found kits from $800 to $4500 on the web. You should try it.

Carol Langley
- Beaumont, Texas

A. Josh,

With all due respect to my friend from Croatia, you will not be able to set up a chrome plating shop for $200,000. If you can buy a shop that cheap then chances are they are either losing money or have environmental problems. I could give you dozens of examples of plating shops across the country that have closed over the past few years because of environmental problems. The problems are very serious. With Superfund legislation, many families have lost all of their assets to clean up the environment after simply closing a plating shop.

Yes, there are people who make a lot of money in the plating business but by and large, they are smart, well financed, professionals. They understand the legal ramifications as well as personal liability that is inherent in the metal finishing industry. They (we) are under tremendous pressure from federal, state and local governments to keep the water, air and land clean around their shops. In addition, the environmental liability they incur is never relieved. NEVER! You have a hex chrome spill on your property today and keep it quiet. You take care of yourself. Thirty years later you're rich and feeling good and want to sell your business. Your buyer insists (if he has any sense) on an environmental audit. He finds trace amounts of hex chrome on the outside of the property. You didn't report it back then to the proper authorities. Yes, we are required to turn ourselves in. His environmental attorney notifies to the proper authorities and you are in a big time mess; quite possibly criminal.

These are not the rantings of a disgruntled plater. I know of many cases where this has happened. If this sounds ominous, good. You might want to go work in a plating shop for six months and see how much fun it really is before you jump into a very risky venture.

Fortunately for guys like me who work for companies that are well established in the industry we can reap some of the benefits of that. The barriers to market entry in metal finishing are high. Be very, very careful before you get into this. Do your research.

Daryl Spindler, CEF
decorative nickel-chrome plating - Greenbrier, Tennessee

A. The thread you've just read tells you some of the things you'll want to know, Johnny, including the need for compliance with regulatory reporting requirements. You may also wish to read our Chrome Plating Tutorial. We hope your 4-word posting isn't typical of your efforts though :-)

Please consider working in a plating shop for a summer, then you'll be armed with at least a general understanding of what it takes to succeed. Good luck!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Ok Josh, maybe I can help a little bit. I agree with those who have posted that plating (on just about any scale) is 1: expensive, 2: difficult, 3: hard work, 4: requires more knowledge than the average do it yourself type (no offense), and the permits and constant inspections will break your bank!

I know this because I have a plating shop. 6,000 sq ft workshop just inside the city limits that is used only for plating. My permits (each year) cost just over $56,000; my disposal fees (last year) another $77,000, supplies another $102,000. So unless you have money falling out of your pockets, don't try it. Also, I worked for 11 years in a plating shop and learned everything about it. It is not a hobby.

Hope I helped.

Bob Johnson
- Crestview, Florida
April 3, 2008

What used to happen was a company contracted with a waste hauler to handle their chrome and other wastes. Unfortunately, as you've probably heard over the years, some of those waste haulers were 'midnight dumpers' who buried waste and disappeared. And some of the people who hired them should have known better -- if somebody beats your other quotes by half, something is suspicious. But the taxpayers were stuck with the cleanup costs for countless superfund sites.
The US Government fixed the problem in the most draconian way imaginable, with new legislation that: If you created the waste you are responsible for it forever, no matter how much you pay to dispose of it, and no matter where it went ('Cradle-to-grave' rule). If someone unknown to you mixes the waste into bricks and builds a building, it's still your problem ('Derived From' or 'Mixture' rule). So once you so much as open that drum of chromic acid it's your problem for the rest of your life; and even your grandchildren will be liable if you pass the business down to them.

A. Hi Carl. It's not quantum mechanics, it's not 'enormously complex'. But chrome plating is not something you should try your hand at because the regulated waste you create is a problem. Some hobbyist suppliers offer substitutes for chrome like tin-cobalt, for example. This is not quite the same as true chrome plating, but may suffice and has even been used on some OEM parts; it's still a possible problem but at least it's not the chemical that made Erin Brockovich a household name.

It may be -- but you'd need to talk to an environmental lawyer -- that you are not a plating shop if you do it only as a non-paying hobby. Universities and government "labs" are considered exempt fairly routinely. You can view EPA CFR433 on line and see the situation for yourself (this is far from the only law, but it is probably the one that costs plating shops the most to comply with). But you can't dump hazardous waste down your sewer even as a hobby.

You might also consider the "chrome-look paints", sometimes called "spray chrome" which are much better than were available a few years ago, and have also been used on some OEM parts, and do not involve electroplating or chrome at all :-).

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. When you do part of the job, it's the age-old battle of who caused the pits and peeling if things don't go well. I don't think any plating shop will guarantee work that has been pre-plated by someone else, or even pre-polished by someone else.

My first choice would be that hobbyists not do metal finishing because they have limited training. My second choice would be that they do the job from start to finish with chemicals as safe as they can buy, and be prepared to spend months or years learning the art.

As for educating people, we've answered questions similar to yours dozens of times already if not hundreds, but it's not possible to present full tutorial instruction in a public forum about a subject that takes months or years to learn; and hobbyists often get angry with us when we tell them they should read books and journals, and attend AESF meetings (www.nasf.org), as we do in our introduction to chrome plating FAQ :-)

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. There is no completely acceptable definition for "triple chrome", so what do you mean by it?

When I was in active plating, I had to comply with city, county, regional, state and federal laws and rulings.

Now, if chrome plating was simple, there would be a great deal of shade tree shops and the competition would be so great that they would almost give away their services. It ain't simple, so it costs to have something professionally plated.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

Ed. note: As discussed in our FAQs, it is probably better to talk about duplex nickel (2 layers of nickel plating) than "triple chrome".

A. Jon -

I can't give you much advice, since I'm not a chrome plater. One important thing though - if you plan on selling ANY of the parts you chrome, or if you plan on charging IN ANY WAY for providing those services for others, you are legally a metal finisher and hazardous waste generator and are responsible for A LOT of issues. Failure to meet all requirements can result in thousands to millions of dollars.

There are a lot of letters on this site describing how best to get into plating. Please read some and follow their advice before you take the legal responsibility of being a plater on your shoulders.

Jim Gorsich
Compton, California, USA

A. Hi, John; hi, Paul. I think you fellows might possibly be more interested on "chrome-look paint" than actual chrome plating. There are some very good ones today and they may be practical for you to do at home. Real chrome plating isn't; you may wish to see our Chrome Plating Tutorial to understand that. Good luck!

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. If you have no hands on experience, a cheap line will give you cheap results. Decorative chrome normally involves copper and nickel undercoats, a polishing line and a chemistry lab. My certified VOM and Temp set up cost me over $1000.

By the way, the EPA fines start at $500.00 per day per offense and there will be at least 1 local, 1 county, 1 state and 1 federal set of laws to comply with and they are at time in opposition to each other. Chrome waste disposal starts at about $1000 a drum and that includes rinse waters.

If it was easy, why are there not a great number of people getting rich doing it. Why are established chrome shops with years of experience going out of business if it is such a lucrative business?

Forget it.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida