Plastics Coating

First, if you really mean bronze, that will require plating. Depending on the plastic you are molding that may not be practical.

Now, on the other hand, most cell phones, and many other small devices are painted. Yes, painted. It's virtually impossible to maintain color consistency from batch to batch of molding resin, so, most molded items are spray painted. Robotics makes this more practical.

Ask your molder about post finishing.

Or, is there more to the story?

When I read "an injection molded part", I think of some thermoplastic.

When I read oil rubbed bronze (BHMA 613, US10B), I think of bronze metal that has been finished per ANSI A156.18.

Can you elaborate? Quantity? Usage? Base material? Is there a metal cover?

All:

This is a painted finish that can be applied to many substrates (in this case the part is black ABS). As it is done by hand, it varies from lot to lot as mentioned. It is more of an artistic coating then an engineered coating that can be tightly spec'd and controlled. A sample step board is used to maintain some consistency.

The coating is meant to simulate the patina of an old bronze part (ornamental bronze). If you visit a commercial lighting store you will find plastic parts that are painted with this decorative coating to make them appear as old metal. We would like to source in North America...the difficulty is the only suppliers that I know of that can do this are in China. For small run production (<5,000APV)...this doesn't always make sense.

There ya go tharmon. lynlynch has pegged it for you.

As is the custom around here for a good answer, I will hit the 'Rate' button, and vote 'Good Answer' for lynlynch.

No problem my friend.

I have purchased Flambeau fishing boxes for years; good stuff. I was unaware they are so diverse in their enterprise. It certainly looks as if they can help our OP. Did not even check the other links; not necessarily an endorsement for Flambeau. Anyone interested should also check the other suggested links and search strings for alternate suppliers.

Another option may be "Cubic Pacific" for all sorts of coatings.

The coating principal they use applies a "transfer" to the plastic part and then a protective coating. Used to decorate things as diverse as toothbrushes, mobile phone covers (in team logos) and even large sheeting with woodgrain decoration for building foyers.

I know they had at least two facilities in the US 5 years back.

Is this the same process they use to cover vehicles with adverts?

No, it involves multiple steps where the transfer is effectively "floated" onto the item being decorated. It's very close to the old technique of "oil marbling" where oil based inks are floated on water, paper dipped through the inks to take up the colour. This allows some wonderful effects like bowling ball that look like solid granite, or desktops that look like very expensive leather. This

The process for vehicles is more like a signwriting technique (peel off adhesive) or else the more expensive individualised spray painted artistic method (Well paid grafitti artists.).

I would like to introduce our company's capabilities to you. We patented an inexpensive and environmentally friendly solution that makes nonconductive materials temporarily electrically conductive. This enables us to powder paint most engineering plastics, fiberglass composites, ceramics and glass materials. We have powder painted multiple types of pastic with an oil rubbed bronze. Please take a look at our website www.novocsolutions.com for more detailed information. We have been using this technology for powder painting archery limbs for our sister company Mathews Inc. www.mathewsinc.com for several years. The use of powder paint on their fiberglass limbs gives them improved fatigue cycle performance and a highly durable finish. We would like to expand our use of this technology to other companies such as yours. I would be happy to send you several samples for your evaluation and comments. If you are interested in the samples we would be glad to demonstrate our abilities on any of your parts. Sincerely, Kevin E. Stay President NoVoc Solutions 1277 Roberts Rd. Sparta, WI 54669 608 386 7254

All:

Thanks for the comments. I have reached out to Novoc and Cubic Pacific for further information.

I, and many others I'm sure, would be interested to know how this plays out.

Keep us posted.

Actually if you really want it to look like bronze, the correct application is not paint, go and have a look at your tap surrounds that look like chrome, they are probably plastic, many gold, brass, chrome and bronze finishes on handles and bathroom products are all done the same way. it is called vacuum metallizing, and is actually the metal in thin sheet vacuum formed onto the item, it is cheaper than painting them. I owned an injection moulding factory many year ago and it was dirt cheap, naturally this was in lots of thousands, but still many places will do prototype plating in every finish you desire.

Archie

All:

An update for those interested.

Four processes were evaluated (samples submitted by vendors). They are:

-powdercoating

-multilayer paint

-ink transfer

-multilayer plating

All processes were demonstrated on a plastic substrate.

It was interesting to learn that there are now suppliers that can apply powdercoat to plastic parts. The ink transfer process was also pretty cool but not so suitable to this application. The powdercoating, multilayer paint and multilayer plating looked very close to the target finish. Vendors I would recommend include R&D Plastics, Matthews/Novoc, and Spectrum Cubic.

http://www.spectrumcubic.com/

http://novocsolutions.com/

http://www.rdplast.com/