When we had problems with heater plates in our factory I had some coated by a company named Poeton. They had a unit just down the road. I did a tour of their place. They did all sorts of metal plating there. I needed a Teflon type coating which they did for me at their Gloucester unit.
They are offering a number of coatings both metallic and non.
They even had a dragonfly coated in a teflon type material in a display case.
Their site shows the range, including a very hard chrome option. Claimed to be harder etc than normal.
The finish on items I saw was excellent, including coatings for Oakley sunglasses and cadmium on helicopter parts.
With chrome plating the main issue is toxicity of chromates/chromic acid etc so it is now less prevalent, bright nickel often replacing it.
They used a simple masking method with tapes etc to prevent plating on some areas of parts, like masking a car for paint.
Cost is an issue, sometimes cheaper to buy a new part!
