Restoration Porn 3: Cad Plating

[dtw]

After doing a bit of research and nearly deciding to send my hardware off to California of all places for cad plating, I realized there was an industrial electroplater about a mile away from my house. Call 'em up...got cad? Yup. Accept small batches? Yup. Gonna cost me? Yuuuuup.

After a week and an unmentionable amount of money later, here are the results. A few extras...MFI lines, throttle crossbars, latches, etc...if anyone wants to help me defray some costs...hint hint.

[Dixie]

Is there any part of a Porsche you didn't have cad plated? ;-)

Seriously though, do you have an extra set of spring plates?

[Tim Walsh]

I'm sure if he could have cad'ed his plastic MFI stacks he would have

[724doorE]

Sweet, I seem to have about 2 1/2 cars worth of the same stuff to get done.

Did you cad the door latches or leave them silver?

[Halm]

Very nice, Dave!

[dtw]

Door latches...you mean the latches that catch the striker plate? Hmmmm forgot about those...they're still in decent shape in the factory cad plating if I remember correctly...

No extra spring plates! I've got a set that's going in the next batch sometime, but those are for the other car...

[dtw]

:P



I know you know I'm just kidding man. I wish that's all I had plated...this process is NOT cheap...

[Shuie]

Nice work Dave! That looks like enough hardware for three cars!

[Dixie]

You should post the name, address, and number for the place. People would appreciate knowing where they can get stuff plated, and I'm sure the company would like the business.

[dtw]

I wish I could. They do very large lots, when I was there last they were packing up a bunch of zinc plated steel collars of some sort for GM. They also do a bit of work for a few local automotive shops and DIY guys who sniff them out. They were very gracious about my batch and seemed to enjoy doing the work, but they did specifically request that I not give out their name, as they don't wish to get inundated with this type of work. They mentioned that they have to 'educate' each customer on proper batch preparation (I spent many hours prepping the parts). Maybe they'll change their minds on small batch work if more of the volume stuff heads to China??

They are, oddly, one of the largest platers on the east coast. Pretty strange if you could see the location - very quiet and unassuming on the outside, and on the edge of a college neighborhood. The facility looks really small from the street but is actually huge on the inside...it sprawls back behind a fence away from the street.

[jpnovak]

Nice. Toight!

So how many hoods are you going to stack up with all those latches?

[Tim K]

Okay, if you can't tell us who it is, could you pass along their wisdom of batch prep? I'm curious as to the condition platers prefer to receive loose parts in.

Thanks
Tim K

[Dennis Kalma]

Just a question, the pile of parts look very nice and I am envious...but the appearance is more of zinc dichromate, as it shows the characteristic shine and rainbow colour effect of that finish. Zinc dichromate is the finish that Porsche has used (at least in the past 25 years or so) and is generally what people think of when they think "cad". The second set of pictures look to me like real cadmium plating, which is definitely duller and I am not sure if it is as durable (my experience is that it is less hard than zinc dichromate), but others swear it is more durable, particularly for threaded fasteners.

Can you confirm?

Dennis

[dtw]

Tim: An abundance of tips on prep in this thread:
Plating Q--Is there anything I shouldn't plate?

Dennis: I confirm that it is cad - well, at least that I was charged for cad and that's what is written up on my work order and invoice. In addition, they were very enthusiastic about doing cad versus zinc, the quality manager spent quite a while extolling the virtues of cad. Note that Noah's parts as pictured may have been sandblasted before plating - my sandblasted and/or pitted parts look a lot like his stuff. I spent hours with a scotch-bright pad polishing up many of my acid-etched parts prior to plating so as to obtain the bright finish.

[Scott Clarke]

Dave-
Did you media blast the larger components? I just had some zinc done, and bead blasted everything I took in . The results are pretty good. The small parts look great, but the larger parts (i.e. spring plates) are a little mottled. I had a batch about half the size of Dave's done for $65, and that was the shop minimum, so I could have done more. Another note about cad: it is very toxic stuff, both when being applied and removed. Respirator use when media blasting is important. Ask me how I know. I decided that I'd like my car to be cadmium and asbestos free even if the finishes don't last as long.

[Zeke]

Noah, My stuff ended up looking somewhere between David's and yours. This could be due to the cameras used. AFA dull looking, you didn't say what your parts looked like going in. David is right, WYSIWYG. Sand or bead blasted parts will take on that characteristic.

The rainbow effect is right on. Cad tends to be more uniform in color according to my plater.

Sending parts to CA? That's got to be a new one. The state is running these people out. Many platers are drop-off shops for delivery to Mexico. They might do a little buffing or whatnot, but the tanks are disappearing fast. Usually when a plating business owner wants to sell, the new permits are too tough to obtain. I think when the present owner die off or run out of relatives, it's game over.

[dtw]

I glass bead blasted many of the larger parts, the rest I dipped in a 5 gallon vat of acid I brewed up on my porch. For any parts where appearance was a concern, I polished up the parts with a scotchbrite pad. For the injection lines, I actually used a cream metal polish and scotchbright and polished each line to a mirror finish before plating. Doing 18 lines (3 sets) took several long hours. Results were quite nice, although the pre-plating acid rinse done at the plater did take the surface polish down a few notches due to the etching effect.

[randywebb]

As a born & bred Southerner, I just have to point out the irony of "a 5 gallon vat of acid I brewed up on my porch..."

[MikeSid]

Damn that's a lot of plating.

Think book deal.....

"The Cad Plated Porsche"

[Dixie]

...proper batch preparation

Can you elaborate? Perhaps that will help me get a better plating job when I take my parts.