Electroplating plastic

It is possible to electroplate ABS and other plastics, as described in this article, "Electroplating of Plastics". Has anyone tried this with printed parts?

... search for "laseractivated MID" or such - here a plastic with embedded chemicals or metallic particles is moulded or 3D-printed and by heating the surface locally with a laser the heated areas went conductive, so you can grow copper- or gold-tracks or pads on them.

This should be possible with reprapped plastic parts too, if the melting temp is lower than the 'activating' temp ...

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Viktor
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I'm wondering whether conductive ABS would make a good substrate for electroplating. It would eliminate several steps and some toxic chemicals used in the normal ABS plating process.

... but then you'll need a two-extruder printer, as you need some non conductive areas too ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

You can electro-plate ABS, but you should use what is known as a "Plating Grade ABS" which is electrically conductive. It's natural ABS color is a dull / light grey. No one in the world currently sells a plating grade filament.

If you are trying to get a "mirrored finish" on printed parts, you could Vacuum Metalize the parts instead. It is cheaper, you don't need it to be made out of a special ABS grade, and the clearcoat finish could then be tinted to look like gold, mirrored red, mirrored green etc.. Like Christmas tree ornaments. I don't know if PLA could be vacuum metalized, it needs to resist a high vacuum, take a static charge, and not outgas too much in the VM chamber.

I had this done to tens of thousands of X game ABS skater helmets and it works very well. I had both real Chrome helmets (at a mfg cost of $12 each) and VM helmets (at about $3.50 each - much cheaper). The Chromed parts have to first get cleaned, plated with copper, etc..., then plated with Chrome. The vacuum metalizing is actually aluminum (if I recal right) that then has to be clear coated in order to keep the alum from oxidizing and ruining the mirroed affect.

I thought about sending out a set of Prusa Parts and have them VM'ed "gold" (and call the machine "24k). It would look more like a raw gold nuggets, than polished gold jewelry.

Beekeeper Wrote:
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> You can electro-plate ABS, but you should use what
> is known as a "Plating Grade ABS" which is
> electrically conductive. It's natural ABS color is
> a dull / light grey. No one in the world currently
> sells a plating grade filament.

How is "Plating Grade ABS" different from Reprap's electrically conductive ABS filament?

Vacuum metalizing sounds interesting. I'm looking for something that I can use at home to plate one plastic part at a time. Is it possible to do vacuum metalizing at home economically?

VDX Wrote:
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> ... but then you'll need a two-extruder printer,
> as you need some non conductive areas too ...

I'm interested in adding a protective attractive surface to plastic parts. I want to plate entire parts, so I don't need non-conductive areas. Metal provides a harder more durable surface than plastic. It would also protect the plastic from UV light, organic solvents, etc. There are also cases where I think a metal surface looks better than plastic.

For one thing, plating grade ABS it is VERY clean, and able to resist the acid cleaning and coating processes without becoming brittle. It also, cannot contaminate the plater's tanks and chemicals used to get the first metal conductive coatings on the parts (usually copper). Any contamination really gets magnified once you start putting a mirror finish on it.

Black plastic always concerns me, since it usually is made out of all of the "junk" plastic that the processor doesn't want to get stuck with. Almost every plastic part can be colored black, a lot of junk processors throw all there garbage into their black batches. If you ever get cheap Chinese black filament that seems extra brittle or doesn't seem to process well, this is the reason. In most other colors, it would show up as major contamination.

Chances are, to get a conductive black ABS, they just used a bunch of "Carbon Black" - which is naturally conductive.

I found some domes that I made about 12 years ago. They show a Natural ABS dome before and after it was vacuum metalized as Gold. The other picture shows the dome made out of Translucent Red, Green, and Blue Polycarbonate along with the gold tinted dome.





You can Vacuum Metalize all sorts of plastic that doesn't conduct electricity because it only needs the parts to hold a static charge and not contamintate the vacuum chamber.

Real Chrome plating uses a ton of very nasty chemicals, the waste is full of heavy metals, if you try it, be careful.

I do VM regularly in a bell jar with an E-Beam source (10 KV @ 8KW). It gets pumped down to a minimum of 5E-6 torr (mmHg). I'm involved in thin film solar panels(Cadmium Telluride) and I have coated everything from plexiglas to a frog mummy....yes dead things can be chromed..... our standard materials are aluminum and chrome. Have also done other things like quartz which wont stick to plastic because of thermal expansion. The substrate needs to be about 200C to minimize stresses. it seems you can coat almost anything with aluminum without substrate heat. Yes you can do it at home but you have to be an expert scavenge .. or rich. Now DC sputtering can damn near be done in the kitchen. Gold sputtering is used all the time in scanning electron microscopy. Yes we did...... a gold mosquito. It was too cool. and a tiny unit (small samples) the unit would fit into a 5 gallon bucket with room to spare. Heck any 4 foot fluorescent light with black ends has sputtered tungsten.....you can too.
Oh and sorry to disagree but static is not involved in VM at least with the types of E-beam I'm familiar with.

Todd

Well, you can do electroless nickel plating, as is often done with stereolithography prints, then plate to that. Though electroless nickel is a really messy process involving chemical that aren't exactly environment or people friendly.

Also, check out this really cool example of what you can do with electroless nickel and 3d printing:
[www.kurzweilai.net]

I asked one of the conductive abs suppliers about plating but apparently the stuff they make for 3d printing has too high resistance for plating. You can plate just about any plastic though if you first paint it with opper filled paint, it's not easy to find and pretty expensive these days.

Once you get your part conductive you can get a home plating kit, it's pretty easy to do from there.

The "electrically conductive" ABS is conductive because it has 10^10 times more conductivity than normal plastic. IT is still 10^10 times less conductive than copper. Number are approximate. Look in the literature for percolation theory + carbon black and you will find a lot of data about this.

Making electrically conductive polymers + electroplating is a BIG deal for reprap. It would mean several things.
1) Airtight parts
2) Very highly conductive traces for PCB printing from plastic first
3) Potentially thick metal parts that are strong.

To this end we have on the back-burner a project for electroplating thick - up to 10 mm thick parts. A work in progress with an anisotropic growth + some porosity. Nothing final yet.

Im developing a kickstarter project that will offer a machine that coats any material including 3d printed parts in a brilliant chrome(and other colored tinted chrome). It will be perfect for just about any shape, is durable for outside applications, and coats inside as well as outside. Look for my project to be posted within two months(Jan).

William Heimiller

Excellent. Is there any place you are posting preliminary info?

Dear TCOLEMAN,
your post is very interesting. It seems you know much more than what you wrote here. I work in jewelry and I am very interested in gold plating / coating plastic material. Can you give more info about your experience ? Thank you very much, Charlie

yes you can gold plate plastic you can get a silver spray or a cheaper metal spray coating which is copper also google spectra chrome and just to let you know any chrome plastic you see, ie car badges can be gold plated

Hey William,

Have you started your kickstarter ?