The electroplating of ABS plastic products belongs to nonmetal electroplating, and nonmetal is a poor conductor of electricity and heat. Therefore, it is necessary to form a conductor metal film on the nonmetal surface as the bottom metal before electroplating.

There are many methods to form metal films, such as electroless copper plating, electroless silver plating, high-temperature reduction of silver paste, vacuum coating, and epoxy resin or coating with metal powder sprayed on the surface. Materials that are not resistant to high temperature, such as plastics.

It is best to use electroless copper plating or electroless silver plating, but the adhesion is poor. Due to the mechanical combination of nonmetallic materials and plated metals, the expansion coefficient varies greatly when heated, so the bonding force of nonmetallic electroplating is worse than that of metal electroplating.

Extended data:

Cleaning: remove dirt and fingerprints left in the plastic molding process, which can be washed with alkali, neutralized with acid leaching and washed with water.

Solvent treatment: wet the plastic surface to work with the regulator in the next step.

Conditioning: the plastic surface is punched with Mao Cheng concave holes with internal locks, so that the coating is closely attached and not easy to peel off, which is also called chemical roughening.

Sensitization: the reducing agent is adsorbed on the surface, usually stannous chloride or other tin compounds, that is, tin ions are adsorbed on the plastic surface and have a reducing surface.

Because of its structural advantages, ABS plastic is not only excellent in comprehensive performance, easy to process and shape, but also easy to corrode the surface of the material and obtain high coating adhesion, so it is widely used in electroplating at present.

With the rapid development of industry, plastic electroplating has become one of the important means of surface decoration of plastic products. At present, electroplating has been widely used in ABS, polypropylene, polysulfone, polycarbonate, nylon, phenolic FRP, polystyrene and other plastic surfaces at home and abroad, among which ABS plastic electroplating is the most widely used and the electroplating effect is the best.

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