Now that would be a challenge! Never even thought about that. Clear cam covers...who would have thought? Might check into this one. Thanks for the idea.
Update 3D Drawings and gentleman is on plane to get the molds cut....another 72hrs I hope at the latest before molds are at factory. Thanks for your patience and I will get started on the inserts as soon as I get this one out of the way.
Great news Andy Thanks for the update. Keener than ever to get my hands on lenses and inserts. What was the outcome of the metallising suggestion for the inserts? Can be done? Cheers, Wal
If you mean in American termonology..chromed , yes they can be. I do not have the means yet to do , I will look around the area after I get the Inserts made and try and get a price. These will be made after the lenses...I dont have enough time or me to handle more than 1 or 2 projects.
Hey Andy, Chrome plating and vacuum metalisation are two different things. You can't properly chrome plastic.
You can properly plate plastic so long as the correct grade of plastic is chosen in the first place. Andy's inserts don't exist yet, so if a grade of platable injection molding ABS is chosen to make the inserts from, and an electroplater with plastics experience and the appropriate chemical infrastructure is chosen, an acceptable result can be obtained. There's an awful lot of modern cars with OEM plated plastic parts. I work for a company that supplies plated OEM plastic grilles, fog lamp surrounds, garnishes, badges etc to Toyota, Holden and Ford. The comment that you can't properly plate plastic certainly applies when trying to plate existing headlight inserts, timing belt covers etc that have not been made from platable ABS.
Inserts Yeah! you need to really follow up RedZedMickey the comments above about the type of plastic...I am not going to put out crap for you guys. I do realize they need to be ABS...but which type? We've started drawing the inserts today...the more info the better. Great post BTW.
See the link here covering Sabic plating grades. One of the grades referred to is Cycolac MG37EP - this is the grade we use; I buy about 180 tonnes per year. Sabic Innovative Plastics is the Saudi based company that purchased the plastics division of GE, long established in engineering plastics. There will be other brands of plating grade ABS - including LG, Toray, Chi Mei ....... If going down this path there can be engineering issues to do with the plating process. Our biggest problem is with distortion during the chroming process - the parts need to be properly jigged on racks to ensure distortion after the molding process is minimized if not eliminated. I can't help with engineering or process questions - I work in Logistics, not Engineering! But if more assistance is needed with determining alternate grades etc, I'll see if I can help.
These are the ones that I'll be sending to Andy to use as a mold starting point. I believe the term used by the person I bought them from said they were vaccum plated (chromed).