Home Plating Kit, Works Pretty Good! Options

[Qarl]

I bought a home plating kit from Caswell Plating called Copy Cad.

It's a Zinc/Cadmium Electroplating kit.

It works pretty good. Next, I will dip them in yellow chromate to duplicate the factory yellow/iradescent finish on the parts.

http://www.caswellplating.com

[HarveyH]

Technically, items touching is not a good idea. There's a real art/science about placement of items in a plating bath. The shape of an item produces areas of higher and lower current density which will affect plating deposition. The higher the current density, the more material will be deposited. For highly critical applications the plater will make shields on the corners to decrease the current density, and rig auxiliary anodes closer to large flat areas or inside curves to even out the plating. If the application warrants, you can intentionally make the plating thicker in one or more areas, and thinner in others.
For 6-7 years I worked in a small electronics plating lab. We made multi-layer PCB's and plated electronics chassis.

Harvey