the etching and pre-plating process that allows plating only works with ABS. at this point i think it's fair to say that the only ABS caps we play around with here are 2-shotted, so we wouldn't particularly want them to be metal plated.
the other thing about this process and the reason it was mostly abandoned by the manufacturing industries that invented it, is that it gives you like every negative part of every material you're using. you have the tensile strength of the most compliant but boring and fairly weak abs, but the corrosion properties of metal. it was really born of a time when the industry was shifting to composites because the research showed that they could get better mechanical properties out of cleverly engineered polymers in most applications at a fraction of the cost, with better surface durability, better elastic and yield properties, etc. etc. but the predominant thinking among consumers at the time was that metal = quality, plastic = crap. so instead of just making better plastics and showing that they were better, they just coated crappy plastics with tiny bits of tin.
and that was basically the start of the fall of the US auto industry.
anyway, unless someone can come up with a particularly clever use of this, i don't think you'll find many if any takers..
