SIZE
Products generally must be smaller than 1300mm in length and 360mm in width.  There are exceptions to every rule however so please contact us for more information.

DURABILITY
Our coating is decorative and not suitable for surfaces that need to be hard wearing sustaining long term use and is certainly not suitable for vehicle exteriors.  Our coating if purely visual can last indefinately.

DIMENSIONS
Another restriction being shape, Vacuum Metalising is a passive process therefore our aluminium has trouble getting into deep recesses, for example the inside of a trophey.   It is basically line of sight, we also need to be able to mount the product for processing by an area of the product that is not seen as this area will not be coated.. 

VACUUM METALISING: An in depth guide

Client Product Requirements Products must not have been in contact with any oil, mould release agents, silicones and even oil from peoples skin. Contact with any of these things will severely reduce the likelihood of an acceptable finish, by preventing our lacquers from adhering to the substrate. * We do not like to clean products before processing to remove contaminants, as more often than not the contamination will be spread. * We advise moulding staff wear nylon gloves at all times. No Dust Preparation Cleaning Pre-used products must be 'cleaned' which involves removing any existing coatings or paints.   Metal products must have a phosphoric treatment to ensure they will not rust. Please Note: Our cleaning process cannot totally remove oil, silicone, grease etc.. and can sometimes spread contamination. The products are then washed to remove any cleaning residue. Once clean, the products are oven dried to remove any moisture from the substrate. Masking We mask off areas which must not be metalised.  This is very important in regards to electrical equipment casings. Priming Depending on the quality and type of substrate some products need to be primed before we can apply our metalising lacquers. For example Nylon and Polypropylene. Coating Base Coat The purpose of the base lacquer is to ensure adhesion to the substrate, and to determine whether the product has a shiny finish, or where required a satin sheen.  It is very important that the substrate is of a high quality, if it is not the following problems can occur- (a) If the product is too porous we cannot acheive an even shine, areas will apear dull. (b) If there is oil or mould release contamination, the basecoat will not adhere. In extreme cases the lacquer will quite literally run away from these areas. (c) Our process does not hide imperfections, it will actually magnify them, with metalising you will not only see the imperfetion you will see a reflection and shadow of the imperfection, making it seem ten times worse. Once the product has been coated it is oven dried before metalising. Metalising The product is now loaded into our metalising chamber.  The chamber is sealed and the air inside is removed by powerful vacuum pumps.  High levels of electrical current are passed through aluminium staples inside the chamber until the Aluminium 'evaporates' leaving an even coating on the products inside. Top Coat A topcoat is now applied to protect the layer of aluminium from external elements.   Depending on requirements of the products we use an appropriate lacquer, for example lighting products require a certain amount of  heat and UV resistance whereas cosmetic products need alcohol resistant coatings. This is also when the colour of the product is determined, for silver we simply apply a clear coating, for a golden finish we would apply a tinted coat and so on.  This means we are able to offer any metalic colour imaginable, we often match our metalising colours to customer's product labels and containers. Quality Assurance All products processed are checked for imperfections.  This includes checking adhesion and scratch resistance of our coating. Packing & Despatch Generally proucts are packaged in layers with tissue between, or whatever packaging is needed to offer protection from scratching in transit.  We can also send direct to your customers which for some companies can be benificial.

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