How to Gold Plate Plastic Phone Covers

A. Anything is possible, Lindsay, including real gold plating on a plastic phone cover. You can see our FAQ, "How to electroplate flowers, leaves, animal skulls, and other organic materials" for a general intro to the concepts, and our thread no. 31550, "How high quality plating on plastics is done" to understand rugged industrial quality plating on plastic.

But I strongly doubt that real gold plating is what you were seeing. My guess is that the item was vacuum metallized with aluminum, and then topcoated with a gold-tone tinted lacquer. The economics of metal finishing, and labor in general, are such that it would cost you far more to get your phone cover plated or metallized than it would cost to get a replacement.

A. Hi Shahidullah. We appended your inquiry to a thread which will expose you to some of the questions you need to ask yourself about the work you envision.

There is an idiom in America: "You have to bring something to the party." I understand your need to open a business but, with "absolutely no idea about chemical reactions", you have to ask yourself if a business to which you bring no knowledge or experience is a good fit for your skills. Maybe it is, but I think it may be weeks before you even have an understanding of what process you really want to do: electroplating with nickel, electroplating with gold, vacuum metallizing with aluminum, PVD deposition of TiN and/or gold, chrome-look paint, gold leafing, etc. But get back to us with specific questions, and best of luck.

Regards,

A. I have been able to gold plate over plastic substrate in many different ways, I started with a silvering glass formula (the brashear process) then followed by a good coat of electrolytic Nickel then followed by gold electroplating, but there are other methods too.

You many want to read about low temperature electroless nickel/cobalt plating, while coating most plastic will have a lot of adhesion issues, this can be overcome by adding an adhesion promoting coating that will attach to the plastic and be itself an adherent surface for the nickel or cobalt, while cobalt is more expensive than nickel, it is not allergic like nickel,
The process will be as follows (it works for 3D Prints based on ABS filaments).
UV Curing adhesion promoting base coat (similar to what PVD coatings).
Low temperature electroless nickel/cobalt plating.
The gold plating process you will use will be dictated by the budget you have; there are very small brush gold plating kits that will plate directly to nickel or cobalt.