Let me tell you a little of my background, My dad has been electroplating for about 30 years now, only metals, never plastics, so I always thought I could exploit that market(Plating Plastics) so I documented myself very well on the subject, being a DIY type of guy(I will be building a DIY DLP after all) I decided to use Graphite coat to plate parts, the Plating process my father uses is double chrome system(Nickel and chrome only no copper) so I applied the graphite conductive coat on a small plastic spoon(coming from a modeler background where we test new colors and technics in plastic spoons), the nickel plated for 40 minutes then Chrome Hexavalent chrome dip, the finish didn’t come out as I would have like it, it lacked a mirror finish because the graphite coating was too thick, I tried to thin it more but it lost its conductive properties, having to build copper(electro forming) and then polishing to a mirror finish and then nickel(polishing again) and chrome was too labor intensive and didn’t produce a consistence mirror finish on delicate plastics, so I decided to go with Spray On Chrome(before that I tried plating ontop of Polished graphite powder and the finish was very good but the powder had poor poor adhesion to the plastics/coatings)


Being a DIY guy I made myself a Spray On Chrome Kit to "Plate" this type of items, in the end the customer is in the look out for a bright mirror finish and that’s what this type of metal deposition gives a mirror finish because it creates a Front surface silver mirror. After all I have learned from this field I believe 3D printed parts should have a similar system but more simplistic, able to do not only silver but copper, gold(Rhodium latter if desired) and Cobalt(non toxic hexavalent chrome alternative)