Gold badges - can you redo them?

[Garry]

The original badges use double sided tape and pins with retainers on the back to locate and hold them in place.

[Mr Morlock]

Chrome plating on plastics eg badges and bezels on boots is done in an electroplating process ( anode cathode and chemicals and baths)It is a tricky process very expensive to maintain quality standards and they have to use plating grade plastics to avoid reject parts. They also have to prepare plating racks which are designed specifically for the part that is being plated- a single rack can easily cost $1000 upwards. Sydney has a well known badge producer- Astor Base Metals. They did for example the well known and handsome Ford oval badge in chrome and blue seen on locally produced vehicles. Vacuum metallising say for headlamp reflectors handles high volume but the parts are not durable for external applications whereas electroplating is.

[bruce]

The badges on the cars were done in-situ. Little machine, two prongs, zap-zap, wait a while, a bit of gold. That is why they don't last. The processes described above are much more hardy and permanent.
I would rip em off and get new silver ones. There's a secret to getting off the frankenstein plates, as I would take em off and polish the gold off.

[Amanda]

I might do as someone suggested in one of these threads and see how much Dick at the MX5Factory would charge to swap them all over for me. I dont want to damage the paint!

[Benny]

Chrome plating on plastics eg badges and bezels on boots is done in an electroplating process ( anode cathode and chemicals and baths)It is a tricky process very expensive to maintain quality standards and they have to use plating grade plastics to avoid reject parts. They also have to prepare plating racks which are designed specifically for the part that is being plated- a single rack can easily cost $1000 upwards. Sydney has a well known badge producer- Astor Base Metals. They did for example the well known and handsome Ford oval badge in chrome and blue seen on locally produced vehicles. Vacuum metallising say for headlamp reflectors handles high volume but the parts are not durable for external applications whereas electroplating is.

But you can only plate plastics AFTER you have metallised them.
There is no way you can just stick any sort of plastic in a plating bath and expect to get any metal on them.
For a start, only something that will conduct electricity can be plated, and plastic most certainly does not conduct electricity.

Even aluminium cannot be plated by conventional means.
You can only nickel or gold plate anything AFTER it has a base of copper on it first, and that's the tricky thing with plastics and many metal alloys.

All electro plated items must have a base plate of copper, then you plate in nickle, then gold or chrome.

I have had metal buckles and fittings made for my company for over 50 years, and I have visited many plating plants, both here and overseas and have seen exactly how it works.
I rmember once we had some plastic trim pieces that we had to have gold plated, and it was a real battle to find a company that would do it for us.
Our usual platers could not do it, and I was there for a full day when they were trying all sorts of ways to get the copper onto the plastic, but only a vacuum system would get the copper onto it.

By the way, chrome is actually brown in colour and is not the shiny, silver colour you see.
What you are seeing is actually nickle, with the chrome on top of it.
The chrome is actually more like a hardener for the nickle underneath.

[bruce]

Perhaps the gold badges are not really 'plated', but had something similar done to them?

[Mr Morlock]

Well I mentioned Astor Base Metals badge and platers to our local industry. Other volume OE plating plants for chrome on plating grade ABS included DMG Keysborough ( not sure of new name but major supplier to Toyota) and Silcraft sadly no longer in business. link to ABM /www.astorbasemetals.com.au/Electroplating/Electroplating.html
The only manufacturer of dmc car reflectors in Australia and using a aluminium vacuum metallising process is Hella and this process is not suitable for externally exposed parts subject to wear ( eg handles) .