Restoring Scratched Parts with Plating

Silchrome are often asked about how electroplating can help ‘breathe new life’ into items which might have succumbed to scratches, pitting and other forms of damage.

Scratches

Many people wrongly assume that plating/coating an item will fill in cracks in the same vein that you might fill in a wall crack with poly-filler. In reality most plating/coating processes will add an even layer onto a part. So where you have a dint in a piece, rather than filling it in until it is the same height as the rest of the component, you will still have a dint, but with a layer on top of it. Any scratches or imperfections will likely be visible after plating. In order to get rid of scratches, we would first of all need to strip away any existing paint/coat/plate which may need to be done through either chemical or mechanical means. Silchrome do have our own polishing equipment on site but where a component might need grinding we will often work with a local supplier. After these scratches have been eliminated and we have a smooth surface, we will then plate/coat the item again.

Pitting

Pitting is one of the most common problems any mechanical component is likely to encounter. It can be caused by a wide variety of sources including the environment, substrate and application of the component. It is most often represented visually by discolouration of the metal or small holes/bumps on the surface. In much the same vein as scratches, plating over pitting is not a solution to the problem and would bethe equivelent to papering over the cracks. Pitting will still be a corrosion site after plating. Where only a small amount of pitting has occurred it can be mechanically ground, restoring a smooth and flat surface on which plating can go on top of. If however you have a lot of pitting then no amount of grinding or polishing can help and the component may be a write off.

Reworking Process

As with any of our components that are going to be plated/coated an extensive amount of care and attention must be put in so as to ensure the part is clean and smooth and ready for plating. This often involves a number of rinses in both water and chemical solutions in order to prepare the surface. Restoration work may in fact involve several different processes and one such example of this would be Chrome Bumpers on cars. It’s quite common that we would strip the part, prepare it for plating, Copper plate to get a smooth surface, Nickel plate for corrosion protection and then Chrome plate for the final layer, we would then polish the item. As such in some cases replacement parts may in fact be more cost effective then restoring them.

Silchrome Plating offer a wide array of metal finishing processes covering everything from Chrome Plating to Chemical Blacking. We are ISO 9001 and 14001 accredited and carry out all of our work from our modern production facility in Leeds, but can serve the whole UK.