Vocab Lesson: Vapor-Metalized Plastic [Vocablesson]

a nice section of plastic goes in, a bit of metal comes out. No less than, that’s what vapor metallizing seems to accomplish, a minimum of to our immediate senses. It’s gilding, except it’s been updated for the electronics age. And it’s everywhere.

Vapor metallization is a technique to a typical industrial problem: Plastic is well moldable, lightweight and exceptionally, cheap to make. Nevertheless, ” nice” metals are tougher to work with, and costlier. So, for an analogous reasons ancient Greek artisans pressed thin layers of gold leaf to statues, countless factories all over the world use vapor metallization treatments to turn plastic into, well, not-plastic. They metallize your laptops and your phones, your mirrors and your car bumpers. You are able to take it either as a clever manufacturing tool or a terrible mass fraud, a cynical option to make customers pay for The Metal Lifestyle, only to live with plastic. Your choice! Either way, here’s how it works.

What it Means: From Materials and Design: The Art and Science of cloth Selection in Product Design: A process during which a thin coating of metal-usually aluminum-is deposited from a vapor onto a part. The vapor is created in a vacuum chamber by direct heating or electron beam heating of the metal, from that’s condenses onto the cold component. (Note: The process is generally called Physical vapor deposition.)

What meaning: Ignoring the hard science of vapor metallization for a minute, here’s what happening, basically: Hunks of plastic, or unfinished metal, are marched into large machines called vacuum metallizers, or liquid metallizers, or sometimes sputtering systems. These can look something like 50s vintage iron lungs, built around large, sturdy-looking tanks and festooned with all manner of tubes and wires, or in more modern incarnations, featureless, room-sized boxes.

The within the vacuum metallizer is rather like a sauna, with industrial components instead of paunchy, leering old men. And instead of humidifying the air with occasional puffs of steam, liquid metallizers vaporize bits of metal into an ultrafine mist. Where sauna-goers strut from backstage glistening under a thin coat of water, vapor-metallized plastics emerge coated with a particularly fine, even layer of real, actual metal. Here’s what the full process appears like, from the surface. (Those are headlight mirrors, by the style):

Of course, vaporizing aluminum isn’t as easy a ladling water onto a bed of semi-decorative rocks, and what’s occurring inside this giant mystery box is very a touch more complicated. And the steam analogy doesn’t hold for terribly long: the steam in a sauna in comprised of molecules of water, floating through an atmosphere packed with various gases. In a metal vaporizers, the vapor is made purely from atoms of the vaporized material, heated either atop a ceramic plate (because metal heaters could produce small amounts of vapor of their own) or by the use of a freakin’ cathode ray, and spewed into total vacuum. (Each of the gasses inside the air we breath would interfere with each of the aluminum atoms floating around.)

This is the explanation vapor metal treatments are so desirable: the film they bring, though it may be as thin as a number of microns, is deposited on the target surface atom by atom, which provides it an atomically (literally!) smooth finish.

In fact, which means that fresh out of the vaporizer, treated plastics are hideously shiny. This makes the technique perfect for turning plastics into mirrors, or creating low-cost chrome-style highlights. But since they’re now covered in a superthin film of exact metal, they may be buffed, sanded or blasted into a less offensive sheen. It could be tasteful or tasteless, type of like spray tanning. Actually, let’s go along with that: Vapor-metallization is spray tanning, for stuff.

This has been Vocab Lesson, Gizmodo’s weekly column on words-the ones you’ve heard, but can’t quite define, or the ones you haven’t, but might wish to hear about.

If you’d prefer to hear more about an odd tech word or phrase, send a request along. We’ll look it up for you! Probably.

Original art by guest artist Chuck Anderson . See Chuck’s work at www.nopattern.com and follow him on Twitter .

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This post is tagged: lesson, plastic, VaporMetalized, Vocab, Vocablesson