fugadude

I have gone through one can of Alclad II Chrome with limited success. I have another two cans one is the Spaz Stix Mirror Chrome and the other is the Spaz Stix Surface Pre-Prep. I am thinking I'd like to lay a think candy color down then spray the chrome behind to give it a a dyed chrome effect. I tried a little of the Spaz Stix Surface Pre-Prep with the Alclad II Chrome and found that in some areas ( I didn't let it dry enough) the chrome effect was really nice and clear. I want an extremely detailed proceedure which anyone can read and recreate to really get a great result every time they attempt to use the chrome sprays. In order to do this I obviously need your help as my success with the spray has been almost nil.

Thanks.

white tiger

My Feedback: (42)

not sure about the spaz ,but the aclad crome has to be backed with a water based black. I have read you can back the spaz with a color to get a color crome, example, back the crome with blue to get a blue crome look

fugadude

I found this on another site:

R/C Car Painting and Airbrushing
Section IV: Specialty Paints


Chrome

What if instead of painting bumpers, engine blocks, trim or other details silver, you could paint them a true chrome finish? Now you can with two different paints, Alclad II Lacquers Chrome and Spaz Stix Liquid Metal. For the first time, r/c painters can achieve true chrome metal look. Prior to this paint, if you wanted chrome bumpers on your r/c car, you either had to settle for silver or use a model sheet film. Neither was ideal with the silver being, well, silver and the sheet films being tedious to apply. With some simple, careful attention to your work, either Spaz Stix Liquid Metal or Alclad Chrome can give you the chrome you've been looking for.

What It Is

Both Spaz Stix Liquid Metal and Alclad II Lacquer chrome are lacquer based paint, sold in 1 oz. vials. Inside the paint, which looks clear with dust inside when new, are small particles which when sprayed and allowed to dry, produce a smooth chrome finish. When drying, the particles align and settle creating a mirror like finish. It should be noted that Alclad II has versions available for both static plastic models as well as Lexan car bodies, be sure the paint you are buying says "For RC Bodies" on the label or you will have the wrong paint. Applying the paints require the same steps for each paint so once you've master one, you've mastered them both. Do NOT use a hair dryer to speed this along since the particles will not align correctly.
Note: Normally I recommend scuffing the inside of the body before you spray to allow for better paint adhesion. Do not do this with chrome since it will stop the mirror like finish. (on a cool note, if you are going for the brushed metal look, scuffing the body before your spray the chrome results in that look.)


Chrome Application

1. Again, start with a properly prepped body, free of mold agents and finger prints.
2. Set you air pressure to between 15 and 20 psi. Any more and it will dry in the airbrush, any less and it will spatter.
3. There is no need to thin the paint. In fact, doing so will ruin it.
4. Apply 3 thin coats. If using Alclad II Lacquers Chrome, allowing it to dry between coats for a good 30 minutes to an hour. If using Spaz Stix Liquid Metal, it only requires a minute or two between coats! During this time, the paint will settle and the particles will realign on the paint. One great benefit to the Spaz Stix Liquid Metal is that the bottle is designed to accept the top of many paint brush siphon cups, which means you can just screw on the bottle and not mess and clean a paint cup.
5. Holding a black card or shirt behind the paint, check the density of your coats. If it looks like chrome when you hold the card behind the body, you've applied enough paint.
6. Clean your airbrush with r/c lacquer based paint thinner.
7. Per the instructions on the bottle, back the chrome with any dark acrylic. I've found black works universally. Do not use a lacquer based paint for backing, (i.e. Pactra Lacquers!) since it will react with the paint! Use Parma FasBlack or Pactra Acryl Black.
8. Revel in the awesome wonder of your creative skills!


Tinted Chrome

Alclad recently introduced a line of transparent tint colors to tint your chrome! They are a transparent paint you spray first, then back with Chrome to achieve Red, Blue, Green or Yellow chrome. Their application is very easy: Simply spray a few coats of the transparent color on the body before you spray the chrome. When you have an even coat that has dried, then spray and back the chrome as you normally would.

xacdesigns

buy the spazstix chrome in a spray can..much easier! The preprep spray is the best stuff I have ever used before shooting a color on bare lexan!

fugadude

From my own experience there doesn’t seem to be any right way or wrong way in which to apply the current mirror chrome, and I’ve never heard of anyone having problems with it (another brands chrome I know about, but not ours) and I deal with both UK and the main Spaz Stix websites emails covering the whole of America and I can say in all honesty I’ve never heard anyone have anything but perfect results every time. The aerosol application needs extra attention and can be easy to get wrong if you just go your own way, but even though its possible to mess it up ive never had any emails from people complaining or so much as mention it, whether they’ve gone one and figured the product is useless I honestly don’t know, but in the last 3 years i’ve never had any complaints about the latest mirror chrome we had available.

Chrome application…

Airbrush:

Ideally the chrome paint should be applied at about 15-20psi, light coats works best, just lightly dust the areas and leave it to stand for a while, I tend to leave it about 2-5min though I suppose really most would say between 30min & 2hrs to be safe. If you keep the coats light you’ll notice the chrome coming through pretty quickly even when its very thin, once your happy with the chrome stick another coat on and you should be fine to back it then. You can always use something soft and black like a bin-liner and put it behind the chrome to check how it looks, and also try holding it to the light looking through the inside and you’ll be able to see which areas are thinner and which are more than covered, it might be that you’ve missed an area and it just needs a little touch-up to make sure it comes out correct.

Backing it can either be done with our own Black backer or with a waterbased black, same rules as before, light coats, try about 20-25psi for our brand black backer as its much thicker, and about 25-30psi for a waterbased black If its straight out of the bottle. Waterbased paint needs much longer between coats as it doesn’t dry anywhere near as quickly as lacquer based, our paints can look dry within just 5-10 seconds as long as you don’t apply the paint too heavy in any given area when its not already dried.

Aerosol:
Same as above and possibly even more impressive because you get the exact same clean mirror finish but its so easy to use and no airbrush to clean afterwards!
Light coats, time inbetween coats to let it settle, when you’ve put enough coats down its ready to be backed.

This is where it gets a little trickier, all aerosol chrome paint needs to be backed with a waterbased black, however in aerosol form that doesn’t exist and using an aerosol chrome of any brand will give so-so results, its just comes out too much at a time and as its eager to bite onto the top layer its too aggressive and the chrome is too fragile and the black disrupts the chrome pigment. The chrome effect is all about light and reflections, and just a small distortion is magnified and while I believe it is possible to get good results if you warm the can up to help with the consistency of the paint as it comes out the nozzle its still pretty much 50/50.

Because of this problem we’ve put in quite a lot of effort into finding a solution, and the best we’ve been able to find so far is a way around not being able to get waterbased black in aerosol form, and we can do this by using the Preval spraying system which is an paintless aerosol with a paint cup at the bottom, allowing you to put whatever fluid you want into the cup and spray it out like a normal aerosol. It’s a middle step between aerosols and airbrushes without the expensive setup costs but allowing you to custom mix your own colours and some of the basic things you can do with an airbrush.

Technically the chrome doesn’t need to be backed, however while that’s fine for electric racers if you’re a nitro guy then obviously if the black doesn’t cause the problems the nitro blocker will instead.




Anyway, that’s spraying chrome out of the way, and all of that assumes you’ve carefully cleaned the bodyshell before painting just to make sure theres no oils left from when the shell was removed from the mould and similar greases from fingerprints etc.

If you wanted to colour the chrome then you can use our Anodized range which are semi-transparent colour tints which produce really crisp looking colours, either with chrome or even silver as the backer to make the colour solid. We have some great photos of these paints on the US website gallery www.spazstix.com/gallery/index.php ( hopefully that’s the correct URL) and it’ll give you a good idea what those paints as well as the chrome can do for you on a paintjob.



If your in the USA then you’ll want to either order locally or online from www.SpazStix.com, if you have any other questions then you can either contact me through the UK site or the US as I cover emails for both.

Hope this clears things up and helps you with your project,

PaulC2K

Looks familiar

fugadude

It's you! Shamelessly pimping yourself I see Hope business is good! I'm going to give the spaz stix chome a go soon. How long do I need to let the surface pre prep dry before laying down the chrome? What is the goal of the surface pre prep? Just to lay down a mist of it on the shell? What does it do, just break down the surface tension of the shell to allow the paint to settle better? I noticed that it smells really strong (very good too kind of fruity haha) should I wait for the smell to dissapate? I think I may have sprayed too much when I was doing a spoiler, and it left an oily residue. I tried painting over but the paint didn't stick (I used it with the alclad chrome though).


I know these things aren't supposed to be so complicated, but I'm the kind of guy that looks at a recipe and is like eh ok what does braise mean? A pinch of salt? What If my pinch is too small or too big? hehe

Anthoop

Just a note to try and help,water based paints dry quicker by air moving over it(use the first stage of your air brush/spray gun)as this draws the water out,whereas any paint with a solvent additive will dry unaided as solvents evaporate much quicker than water,hope this is of some help.

PaulC2K

The preprep just needs a light dusting really, and i have to agree on the scent being rather nice, first time i got the airbrush version it reminded me of raspberry ripple ice cream

I always use the aerosol version, it just doesnt really make sense to use the airbrush version as really your looking to cover a decent sized area and its much easier to pick up a can give it a spray and put it down, saves messing with the airbrush & compressor.

Uses:
Its good for lifting and removing the release agent which can be left on the inside of the bodyshells when they come off the mold, it also gets rid of other similar greases, particularly from greasy fingers when you've been masking away in there. Its just a gental cleaner which you can do before or during your work on a paintjob, so when you come to remove some masking you can spray some over that area without harming the paint which is already down.
Another use is for removing static which builds up around the shell, now i have to admit i dont think its the pre-prep itself doing this, it could be any liquid im not sure, however if you give the *outside* a fine dusting it honestly does remove the static, and particularly for fine detail work you get far tidier results, sometimes the static will pull unsettled paint particles which are just floating in the air (about 75% of your paint goes onto the shell, 25% doesnt get to the surface and is blown about, dries in midair and basically forms like dust on your bodyshell - sometimes you can wipe it off fine, but if your not careful you can disturb the top-layer a little, which isnt a problem on block areas but if its an outline for shaddowing your top layer can be your only layer, and you'll see the wiping. It also depends on the contrast of the colours, black on white you'll spot issues a mile away, black on blue and you'll get away with things much easier).
So its uses are for removing greases and static buildup.

Application:
It doesnt need much, a fine dusting is enough, then leave it for about 5min and it will evaporate fine and your ready to paint. If you put a bit too much down then it can go a bit oily and you get that oil/water rainbow type effect, a soft cloth or something similar can be used to wipe the surface clean if you need to do this.



The issue of the paint not sticking, that may be because of too much PP being applied, ive never tried putting on quite a lot to see the results it would have but i guess if an oily residue is left then you've basically created exactly what you wanted to remove (and im betting no amount of pre-prep on top will remove it either hehe - maybe thats one thing it cant shift!). I doubt it was the fault of the paint used, as much as i'd like to blame it :P

fugadude

Thanks for posting the info. You should post some of your examples of the chrome results on actual bodies people have painted. I haven't seen very many.