Vacuum metallization is considered the standard choice for plastic metallization treatment in a variety of industries such as cosmetic, houseware and automotive etc. The standard setup of vacuum metallization painting line including a base and top painting station which is used for UV base and top coating purposes. But in actual production, sometimes we don’t use the painting line just for metallizing purpose but also for coloring and varnishing.
When we need to use for painting only without metal finishing result, we just want spray coating then varnishing. But most of the time we will see color difference which is a serious quality issue. And most of the time its not by spraying technique but the material itself. For example we use recycled material for injection instead of original. The recycled material might contains different sources with various colors and the final moulded pieces will come with colorful output. As a result of this, it’s a huge chanllenge for coating. Because the base object color difference, the paint layer can not fully cover it which is not acceptable for QC.
To fix it quick, we can apply vacuum metallization directly on base product. In this way, we can not only fix the color difference but also be able to improve the product physical performance for various tests and actual application. The metal layer will fully cover the base material weakness and even better than original production after this process.
Is there any other way?
Yes certainly. Beside vacuum option, we can also use spraying directly. Before we coloring the surface we can spray silver type coating as base coating. After properly cured then we apply the specific color then varnishing. We can also get perfect finishing by this process. Just remember to use a grey color base coating to cover the object instead of any shining color paint. A grey color or silver type color coating is perfect choice for this purpose.
Generally speaking, a vacuum metallization painting system is only setup dedicated for plastic metallization purpose. If we have above mentioned issues on base product, we have to consider it seriously for initial machine design. Modification on existing setup is not a good choice.
