Chrome spray paint

[fiatslug87]

Has anyone had any luck finding a spray paint that actually looks chrome? I’ve tried a couple and was not impressed by them. This would be for plastic, non-MJ related. If you have pictures I would appreciate you posting them. Thanks.

[Salvagedcircuit]

Reach out to PCBway and get a quote for metal deposition. It is often called "vapor deposition" in industry. It is a process commonly used for metalizing plastic for conductive and reflective properties. Modern automotive headlight reflectors are plastic with aluminum deposition on the convex side. Fancy 5g radio equipment and high dollar RF equipment use metal deposition for shielding specific sections of high frequency PCBs. Traditionally, a machined chunk of aluminum was used to provide isolation between regions of a high speed PCB along with metal fingers and ESD padding. The hollowed out custom aluminum block would sit on top of the circuit board and be screwed to a ground rail. By creating metal cavities to contain the noisy regions of a PCB, you can effectively create a compartmentalized Faraday cage and keep other regions of convolution free from contamination. However, machining aluminum is a time consuming and costly process, especially in volume. It makes sense for dozens of items, but not 10s of thousands.

 

Depositing metal onto a plastic injection molded part makes a lot more sense in those applications. It's become a lot more common in RF equipment in the past 5-10 years. I've used PCBway and JLCpcb for PCB making and they are incredibly cheap. Many folks that use their service believe they are subsidized by china itself as they often produce goods cheaper than the cost of the material in developed countries. I have not used their metal deposition service, but finding out a quote can't hurt.

 

Edit: spray paint will likely be cheaper, but I know some folks go full-on and send parts to Mexico to be chrome plated, since the very hazardous plating process is basically banned in the USA.

Good luck!

[jpnjake]

1 hour ago, fiatslug87 said:

Has anyone had any luck finding a spray paint that actually looks chrome? I’ve tried a couple and was not impressed by them. This would be for plastic, non-MJ related. If you have pictures I would appreciate you posting them. Thanks.

I’ve been looking into this a decent amount lately, I know they make a somewhat realistic Rc paint for Rc plastic body’s, and there is a company that claims to have roll on or spray on paint that becomes very reflective like chrome after a short time  “Easy Chrome” (this is extremely expensive) And then there’s chrome wrap, for specific applications this is probably the best way. Chrome wrap

[frankspeed420]

New one out is best. Revell chrome spray

[fiatslug87]

That’s what I’m looking for but can’t find it at a reasonable price. $60 for a 150mL can is a bit steep for my needs.