Plating on Plastics (POP)
KCH has designed, manufactured, and installed very large and very effective Exhaust /Ventilation and Scrubber / Mist Eliminator Systems for large Plating on Plastics (POP) Machines. This includes many automotive components that are much more cost efficient to make from plastic, then electroplating them with chrome or nickel for decorative purposes. Some of these are front end grills for most automobiles and large eighteen wheel trucks. These could also include any automobile interior or exterior decorative components, door handles, wheel covers, decorative features, dashboard constituents, and many other automotive components that need chromium or nickel plating primarily for decorative purposes. POP is not only limited to the automobile industry. It is an excellent and very effective technology that can be used in a large variety of manufacturing processes.
POP requires many of same chemistries as for electroplating, but plating of either nickel or copper occurs on a plastic substrate by the principle of chemical reduction. These plastic parts must still be properly prepared in the pre-plate section of the POP machine by soak and electro-cleaners, and low concentrations of HCL in acid activators, accelerators, and neutralizers.
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The next step in POP is the immersion of the component to be plated into the actual plating bath, either electroless copper, or a safer plating method option, electroless nickel. The electroless nickel bath needs no electrolysis to plate a nickel onto almost any surface, but in most cases, it is used to provide a metal substrate uniformly onto plastic components. These plastics then have a metal surface on which to electroplate.
POP typically consists of many of the chemistries uses of standard machines for metal plating, so the tanks must be thoroughly exhausted. These chemistries include: Hexavalent Chromium, Nickel, HCL, and Nitric Acid.
Please contact KCH for complete design information for the POP process, the Exhaust / Ventilation design requirements for each of the emissions that are present on the POP line, and the scrubber or mist eliminator design to ensure the acid/alkaline emissions are in compliance with Federal and State Emission Regulations.
