Hard Chrome Roll Plating & Grinding

Our Hard Chrome Roll Plating Services

HIGH-TECH TOOLS IN EXPERIENCED HANDS

Hard chrome plating is what gives a production roll its working surface: the wear life, the corrosion resistance, the release characteristics your line was designed around. But chrome coming out of the tank isn't ready to run. It still has to be ground down, brought to the right Ra, and trued up to the runout your machine needs. That second step is where a lot of plating shops hand the roll back and tell you to find a grinder. We don't.

MPP has been doing hard chrome roll plating in Waterbury, Connecticut for more than 70 years, and we've spent every one of those years doing the grinding, too. A roll comes in, gets plated, gets ground to spec, and goes back to your line on a single work order. If you've ever shipped one of your chrome-plated rolls out to a separate finishing shop and lived through the extra lead time and the finger-pointing when something is off, you already know why that matters.

What We Plate and What We Plate Onto

Industrial roll chrome plating builds a dense, wear-resistant chrome deposit directly onto the roll surface, giving you the hardness, corrosion resistance, and release characteristics that production lines depend on. Our team plates directly to a wide range of substrates, including:

Stainless steel
Nickel
Iron (various grades)
Carbon steel
Aluminum
Other metal composites

Deposit thickness is built to your application. A light-duty converting roll, a heavily loaded calendar roll, and an embossing roll that needs to be reground several times over a long service life all call for different chrome thicknesses. We'll work through that with you before the roll goes in the tank.

Roll Sizes We Handle

Our plating tanks are sized for industrial production rolls. We routinely plate rolls up to:

12' diameter x 20' length
7' diameter x 38' length
6' diameter x 20' length
4' diameter x 30' length
2' diameter x 17' length
2 1/2' diameter x 8' length

Weight capacity runs up to 60,000 lbs, supported by an overhead crane rated to the same. We're one of the few facilities in the country that handles this range of roll sizes and performs every critical step of hard chrome roll plating, from the tank through the final grinding and surface finishing: all under the same roof.

Grinding: The Finishing Touch

Chrome coming out of the tank has a deposit pattern that must be ground down before you have a usable roll surface. This step separates a finished roll from a plated one, and it's a step many hard chrome plating services don't perform in-house.

MPP grinds chromium-plated rolls to surface finishes of 2 Ra and tolerances of 50 millionths TIR (Total Indicator Runout) and shape. We can also grind the roll in its bearings to take installation variability out of the equation. The goal is a roll you can put back on your line and run with no variation in runout, no feedlines, no chatter, and no hard spots.

Engineered Fixtures and Process Control

Every roll we plate is run on a fixture designed for it by our in-house engineers. The fixturing keeps the chrome deposit consistent across the roll face and prevents acid from getting inside the roll body; a small detail with a big impact on roll life. Throughout the run, the bath chemistry is held to tight parameters so the chrome thickness matches the spec sheet.

We also maintain a permanent file on every roll that comes through our facility in our Roll Records Library. The next time you send the same roll back for replating, whether that's two years from now or twenty, we already know the history, the substrate, the previous deposit thickness, and the finish you've asked for in the past. We've had customers come back to us for records on rolls we serviced 25 years prior.

Where Roll Plating Fits With Our Other Roll Services

Hard chrome roll plating is one piece of MPP's roll service lifecycle. We also handle roll repair for heat transfer rolls that need reshelling or internal reconditioning, precision roll grinding when a roll must be brought back to spec, and surface finishing in more than 150 specialty finishes. For most customers, a roll comes in and gets every service it needs, without ever leaving Waterbury.

Frequently Asked Questions: Hard Chrome Roll Plating

Can you plate to a finished dimension, or do I need to allow for post-plate grinding?

For production rolls, the right answer is almost always to overplate slightly and finish-grind to your final dimension and surface finish. Chrome coming out of the tank isn't dimensionally precise enough to run on most production lines as-is. We'll size the deposit so there's enough material to grind down to your final Ra and TIR spec without coming up short.

Can MPP re-chrome a roll that's already been plated before?

Yes, and we do this constantly. The old chrome is stripped, the substrate is inspected and prepared, and the roll is replated and re-ground to your current spec. If we've plated the roll before, we already have the records on file, which speeds up the quote and reduces the risk of surprises during the run.

How thick a chrome deposit can MPP apply to a roll?

Deposit thickness depends entirely on the application. Light-duty converting and printing rolls typically run thinner, while rolls to be reground multiple times over a long service life are often plated heavier to provide additional wear surface. We size the deposit to your application and your regrind plan rather than defaulting to a single number. Send us your spec, and we'll confirm what's appropriate for your roll.

Will MPP handle the roll from start to finish, or just the plating?

Start to finish. Most rolls that come in for plating leave with the chrome plated, ground to spec, and surface-finished to whatever the line requires, whether that's a mirror polish, a matte finish, or one of the 150+ specialty finishes we offer. You ship us a roll, you receive back a roll that's ready to install.

Industrial Hard Chrome Roll Plating