A brilliant outlook is assured by a recently-launched combination coating process using electroplating and lacquer to create a black-chrome effect. Dark shades of this kind with high-gloss chromed plastic surfaces provide a suitable means of individualising automotive interiors and enhance visual and tactile impact. Electroplating alone cannot currently generate dark shades of colour that offer processing and colour stability with good wear resistance. It is only by means of a highly-complex and sophisticated finish using individually-coloured clear lacquers – as either primers or topcoats – that such fashionable shades can be produced on a chrome plated substrate.

At the beginning of 2012, Berlac launched a combination coating process using electroplating and lacquering to create a black-chrome look, which it had developed in close cooperation with a number of leading suppliers of automotive components. This coating method meets the stringent requirements of automobile interior applications and will soon be approved for use in demanding exterior insert functions with various leading OEMs. In developing this process, Berlac was able to call upon decades of experience in creating coating solutions for electroplated substrates in the spectacle frame sector.