This category and its subcategories cover the wide range of services involved in giving metal and non metal surfaces, products, and components a protective, decorative, or, in some cases, specially required finish. It embraces a variety of plating, coating, polishing, and special purpose processes, the providers of which are indexed under whichever heading can be seen (or at least considered) to best reflect each company's business focus.

Note: There are some fine distinctions among the variety of plating, coating, and finishing processes and end results, with companies offering all (or most) of them or limiting themselves to some -- or even a single one -- of them. To best sort out the differences, sites are allocated in one of two ways. On the one hand, a company's obvious emphasis on one type of process (e.g. Anodizing or Chrome or Galvanizing) will put it into an appropriately specific category. On the other hand, a company that runs the gamut of several processes (as, in fact, the greater number of firms do) will place it in either this main category (to reflect involvement in both Plating and Coating, for example) or the main Plating one (in recognition that the capabilities are wide rather than narrow ranging).

Additional note: Coating sites more logically belong in the Surface_Treating category, as do, in many case, sites relating to Polishing. The rationale for such allocations rests on a judgement (however arbitary it may be) that coating processes add a finish with little if any change in the physical properties of the underlying surfaces, whereas plating almost always changes them. In turn, polishing depends to a large degree on a machining (or sometimes a hand) operation and belongs under a Plating heading only if it takes some form of electromechanical or electrochemical deposition or alteration to the surface.