# New source for Palladium??



## user 12009 (May 6, 2010)

I am new to this forum and tried to find info on this but could not. So need your help. 

Last month I was watching MODERN MARVELS on the History Channel. The episode was called CHROME. One of the segments described how plastic is chrome plated for cars. I know they simplified it for the viewer but bacically they:
1) acid etched the plastic
2) dipped it in Palladium to fill in the rough surface
3) plated copper (or nickel) to the Palladium
4) chrome plated

So here are some questions I have:

Does all chrome plated plactic use this method?
Is there a company out there that would buy the plastic parts?
Any idea if it would be worth while to do this?
Is there a simple way to test for Palladium?


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## goldsilverpro (May 6, 2010)

Dan,

I could be wrong, but I don't think the Pd will be thick enough to mess with. It is applied from what is called a sensitizing or nucleation solution to the plastic. Sometimes, a tin compound is applied first and sometimes the tin and Pd are in the same solution. It's more of a "seed" layer than a plating layer, I think. I have seen this done a long time ago and I'm thinking that it was so thin that it was basically transparent to the eye. This article pretty well sums up the process as I have seen it done. I tried to search for the thickness of the Pd, but had no luck.

http://yarchive.net/metal/plating_plastic.html

Chris


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## user 12009 (May 6, 2010)

Thanks, I was afraid of that. I have contacted the company that was on the show but no answer yet.


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## goldsilverpro (May 6, 2010)

BTW, I looked more closely at the usenet archive site link I just gave and there's some pretty good stuff on there. Here's the metals page and the main index:
http://yarchive.net/metal/
http://yarchive.net/


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## Shaul (May 8, 2010)

Thanks GSP for the great links. 
For anyone seriously considering building their own Moon Rocket powered by an Atomic Bomb, this is definitely the place to go.
And yes, the A-bomb propulsion system is there under: "Space/Exotics/Nuke-powered Cannon" :roll: 

There's also a ton of other cool 8) and useful stuff.

Thanks Again,

Shaul


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