Electroplating ABS prints from Prusa i3 - Problems

Fascinating. Thanks for posting this. After never being able to get good and consistent results, I sort of gave up and haven't touched it in awhile. This might get me excited again.

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Prusa i3 8" (Makerfarm) / Dual Hexagon 0.4 extruder

Blazoner, thanks for that link. Already ordered some graphite to test this out. I think the best results would be by vapor smoothing the print first then I plan on trying an airbrush to paint it with the graphite acetone mix. I might even try dipping method.

I thought I would stop by to give my preliminary results on using graphite and acetone to electroplate ABS plastic. I am going to preface this with the fact that my plating kit is old so it's possible my chemicals are weak.

Got my graphite powder and mixed it with some acetone (easy enough but boy was it messy just opening the graphite. I painted a white ABS part with the solution and applied several coats. It dried very quickly like less than a minute.

I then wiped the part to get off any loose graphite (impossible as it's now basically a pencil). This got me concerned since it's so easy to remove a layer of graphite off the abs, I wiped and wiped it and even sanded a small portion but it was still black from graphite so I moved on to plating.

Now you always start with copper so that is what I did, first though I measure the piece with my ohm meter to see if it was conductive and it was but very high resistance (sorry I did not write it down but it was like 200k or more).

I wrapped a nickel plated solid wire around the part (it make contact with the graphite in at least 4 places). I tried the brush method first (how I use to plate coins and small parts) but it was not working well so I used the dip method (put the part and electrode side by side in the chemical) the electrode was giving off bubbles indicating it was working at least a little but when I pulled the part out there was only a very faint hint of copper on part while the wire that was wrapped around it was pretty well coated. Even the copper that was on the part was very uneven and seemed to turn black if I wiped it.

So I tried nickel and while more of the part turned nickel color it too was easy to wipe the color away, in some spots it was more durable (right next to where the wire made contact with the part) and so I hit it with some very fine sand paper (12,000 grit) and it never got shiny but did stay a dull gray silver colored but in a very uneven way (looked a lot like an antique tarnished part).

I've done electoplating in the past on plastic and sla parts and I found the Caswell kits work VERY well, and the book that comes with them covers everything in regards to electroplating from a DIY stand point. Not to mention safer chemicals to use indoors with exception of the Acid copper because you are using battery acid.

If you have CAD software that will give you the surface area of your model it will help calculate your current.

What works for me

step 1- copper sheilding spray in a spray can (from MG chem) or silver spray from Caswell that is sprayed in Prevail sprayer. Let it dry at least 24hrs.

Step 2-Electroplate Flash copper layer: "flash"copper gives a very fine, "sticky" layer (I skip the SP degreaser because the surface spray applied in step 1 is clean)

Step 3- Electroplate Acid Copper layer: Acid copper is the "high build" layer that you can build up real thick and sand/smooth imperfections and polish. How much depends on how smooth your part started off before step 1.

Step 4- Electroplate with Nickel or copy chrome(I like copy chrome myself because you don't need heaters)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2015 05:37PM by CdnReprap.

Quote
CdnReprap
I've done electoplating in the past on plastic and sla parts and I found the Caswell kits work VERY well, and the book that comes with them covers everything in regards to electroplating from a DIY stand point. Not to mention safer chemicals to use indoors with exception of the Acid copper because you are using battery acid.

If you have CAD software that will give you the surface area of your model it will help calculate your current.

What works for me

step 1- copper sheilding spray in a spray can (from MG chem) or silver spray from Caswell that is sprayed in Prevail sprayer. Let it dry at least 24hrs.

Step 2-Electroplate Flash copper layer: "flash"copper gives a very fine, "sticky" layer (I skip the SP degreaser because the surface spray applied in step 1 is clean)

Step 3- Electroplate Acid Copper layer: Acid copper is the "high build" layer that you can build up real thick and sand/smooth imperfections and polish. How much depends on how smooth your part started off before step 1.

Step 4- Electroplate with Nickel or copy chrome(I like copy chrome myself because you don't need heaters)

Lol 3 pages of tangential information. Thanks for posting correct info with experience, Cdnreprap. It was obvious the problem here is that he skipped the copper step. Also the fact the part wasn't finished by sanding or smoothing is obviously going to leave a very poor surface finish. That's the problem with the internet these days. Overabundance of information and very little actual experience.

Anyway,

How different is the look of nickel vs copy chrome?

Do you use the brush acid copper kit or something else?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2016 09:42AM by MetaFortis.