Issues with chromium plating and recommending to continue with nickel plating as the standard finish.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 30\6\ Scan056 | |
| Date | 18th October 1928 | |
| Sg. {Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} Hs. {Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} X1360 BY {R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} /14/G.18.10.28. CHROMIUM PLATING. It is important that my recent decision to permit an owner to have a fully chromium plated car not to be misinterpreted. I still think that chromium plating has a considerably way to go before it is likely to become really useful. From all the information available it would still appear to be a 'hit and miss' arrangement depending enormously upon the care and skill of the platers, and therefore we should go very slowly in accepting instructions to produce chromium finished cars. We have instructed an experimental car to be chromium plated, and one would like to go very slowly indeed until positive information is available as a result of the running of the car in question. One weakness in chromium plating is that it is inherently brittle as a result of its intense hardness. The plating therefore depends absolutely upon the metal upon which it is deposited for stiffness. If the metal is flexible and easily distorted then it is almost certain the chromium will crack, and will do so in the form of continuous net work. If the metal base is of robust section and not subject to distortion then a thin coat of chromium would stand. In any case thick deposits of chromium are bound to give trouble as the internal stress set up in the deposition of the metal is such as to intensify its natural brittleness. The gist of the foregoing is that one still considers nickel plating to be the standard finish and that it is likely to be so in view of the difficulties with chromium for some long time to come apart from any question of colour preferences. BY. {R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} BM | ||
From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).