Very nice, thank you Robert. It might be a step to making a solid metal plastic mold from a 3D printed master since copper is such a high temperature material.
Great job Mr Murray-Smith. It would be amazing to compare this under a microscope to an electroplated model to see what the microstructure comparision would be or even just see how the conductivity compares. Thanks and happy holidays!
mechanical coating is a real treat. Even if you plan in electrocoating after for densification reasons or just to do some elecrochemical machining a quick throw in a tumbler or even just a coffee can with a strong shake will help get good uniform results! Also, you can do a lot of cool things with a 3d printer and some mechanical plating, you can use the plated material to act as a mold to reheat your prints and get better layer adhesion if that has been problematic! simple, neat and clever process defenitly one of my favorites.
Very interesting... Is such a thin plating really strong enough to preserve the shape of the part? I've annealed prints in fine powders but that's not without its challenges.
I'd be interested to see 1) how this compares against putting the print, powder and media in a bottle and shaking by hand for a minute or so 2) if this is a good starting point for an electroplating process to provide an adherent base layer Food for thought as always!
Point 2 is especially attractive. I've had difficulty getting conductive graphite paint to work with electroplating PLA prints and sliver/copper conductive paint is even more expensive. If you can use this method to get a base copper layer, then you could electroplate a thicker layer on top. Or do another layer, like nickel or silver on top.
I have done some test with just that. It is hard because copper oxidise very quickly. I think you can use some vinegar or citric acid to make it conductive again.
It reminds me of powder coating I worked at General Electric they would spray powder coat on those fuse boxes and then bake it on. a super hard resilient finish
Very interesting, this seems like a much more affordable option over copper electroplating! I would like to try this method to obtain a conductive layer on my parts, and follow them with a layer of nickel (via electroplating). I am planning on experimenting with the variables you mentioned to find an optimal ‘technique’. Again, great video! Thank you for the information.
Maybe following peen plating with electroplating, then finishing it with metallic paint or ink would combine useful properties of all three methods. Probably depends on what you want the coating to do.
Ohh that's interesting. I've been using all kinds of metallic powders that I want to test with this technique. I'm trying to get away from plating because it takes too long and is a hassle. I will test this, I have already got evrything. This seems promising, thanks a lot !
Oh wow. I've been meaning to try electroplating but getting some of the chemicals and acids needed for good results seems difficult in the UK. Never heard of this method before. I've already got a home made tumbler using a sewing machine motor.
Hi dear Robert ! It's Christmas even after time !! Thank you VERY MUCH for this very clever and demonstrative video. I was wondering : have you a mesh finesness to recommend, when using copper dust ? Also, keep in mind that several coppers exists : those with phosphor traces, those with oxygen oxydules, very pure copper without oxygen or phosphorus, and those "springy" but lethal copper-beryllium alloys. This trick is very surprising, I don't have the habit to manipulate PLA, or to mix PLA with acetone. I was thinking that it will result in a dramatic melting, like polystyrene foam. But seems... not really. You have a very convincing manner to do this trick, be thanked !!
I had never heard of this before, and now I want to give it a try. I've been interested in electroplating, but I just don't have the workspace to support it, so this may be a handy alternative. Question: when you say the acetone made the PLA sticky, are you saying that it reacted with the PLA to soften the surface (which is not what I would have expected), or just that the wet surface retained the powder as a kind of acetone/copper "mud" and the copper remained in place as the acetone evaporated?
That is spectacular. Seems like a good foundation to plate on nickel which is shiny and pretty, though not particularly healthy. Layered with gold, palladium, rhodium...
This is new to me. This process is used on mechanical hardware? Then it's actually robust enough to be mechanically abraded that it doesn't just dust off? Or are those metal parts coated in a protective seal too?
cool. I wonder, you could make strange shaped conducting 3D printed stuff like this i guess? I heard most of the current runs on the surface of the cables, so you could print a 3 dimensional mesh cable or structure, copper plate it and use it as a connector i guess? Perhaps use high heat resistant printing material if it needs to stay or even low heat resistant material if you would want to plastic to melt out of the conductor? I am thinking for exampe, cell anode connectors that are perfectly shaped.... an electrical circuit that runs in 3 dimensions instead of on flat surfaces so it could be squeezed better into perhaps a spherically shaped object and so on
Very interesting, Mr. Murray - Smith!! As a cast member on a TV automotive "reality" show, I have often been tasked with odd plating projects. I may add your method to my arsenal of tactics! No, I definitely *WILL!* Thanks, and Happy New Year!!
Once copper coated it would be simple to electroplate with other materials like silver or gold, I know that skipping this step and using your graphite paint will also work prior to electroplating. 💰
likewise i feel like i tried and it didn't do anything at all... can't really remember as maybe a decade ago? maybe i wasn't using real acetone or something??
Has anyone found any technique to make this work with ABS (or any other materials besides the PLA used in the video)? I tried and nothing stuck, not even after dunking it in acetone.
My interest is small RF antennas. What I need is a highly electrically conductive plating. Would this process work? How about following it up with electro plating?
I'm thinking of an application requiring at least a uniform conductivity, touch sensors. A few hundred Ohms across the surface isn't a big problem in my case. Given that, electroplating for thickness shouldn't be a problem.
@fluffy_unicorn859 thanks for reply mate but this whole conundrum is to , do electroforming aluminum this is not about plating at all , but if you can plate you can make it thicker Rob is know for this kind of stuff , once he told , how easily you can weld aluminum with zinc
The few "conductive" filaments I've tried was really bad. Even when I could measure some conductivity, the resistance was so high I'd hesitate to call it useful. If anyone has had better experiences I'd love to hear it but I have a hard time believing it would work well enough for electroplating.
@@JJFX- I was wondering similar, although if the piece was left in long enough, the bonds might start to build up between all the gaps and improve conductivity to the point where everything would fuse together, certainly worth trying to see if part strength improves, could also be interesting making current collector plates for batteries and super capacitors.
@@dav1dbone Well give it a shot but my experience with electroplating tells me you'd be better off just coating a print as he did or with a conductive primer. I suspect any conductive filament that might be consistent enough to do this would be too expensive to be practical.
darn it ,we now have bronze God Robert ! . [ I know all poms secretly want to migrate to aussie ,now we know why !!] . great little demo Rob [ lord of tinker cad ] ,could presumably help reinforce the print-lines, could your graphene make thing a lot stronger ?,or titanium ?. Just watched a demo of an 'Elegoo Orangestorm giga ' printer , nearly a meter cube ,and fast .may interest you .
The coatings are thin enough that it doesn't generally significantly impact the strength of the object, but it should make the surface harder. That would make it more resistant to abrasion. In theory, with a thick coat you could sharpen a cutting edge. I can't imagine any other mechanical benefits of electroplating.
Living on a boat I’d really like to see a “Real performing” wind turbine that isn’t massive that anyone could install that gives around 500w…? Most of us rely on solar in summer but have to run Generators or main engine in winter months. I look online and all I see are cheap useless Chinese rubbish giving out 100w max or £1000 UK versions that have to be on a 20’ pole! Is there “anything” that will happily put out approx 5-10amps dc in a strong breeze…?.
@@olivierroy1301 Yeah I hear you, I've been there many times my friend. If it's a typical FDM printer simply swapping in a new mainboard is often fairly straightforward though. After a number of issues, all my FDM machines (except a belt printer) now run Klipper and I could never go back. Printer configurations are simply backed up as text files and converting common machines is easy. Supply of raspberry pi's is finally normalizing again and there are even mainboards now that are all-in-one.
I'd never heard of this method. Thanks for sharing, that's a really great result.
Very nice, thank you Robert. It might be a step to making a solid metal plastic mold from a 3D printed master since copper is such a high temperature material.
Yeah that was pretty epic. Great idea and looks like it smooths out the print lines as well ❤
I say, leave the bust outside. Let it tarnish! The verdigris will add a certain Old World charm to it, don't you know.
You're awesome. I learn every time I watch you! What a treat. Thank you.
Great job Mr Murray-Smith. It would be amazing to compare this under a microscope to an electroplated model to see what the microstructure comparision would be or even just see how the conductivity compares. Thanks and happy holidays!
mechanical coating is a real treat. Even if you plan in electrocoating after for densification reasons or just to do some elecrochemical machining a quick throw in a tumbler or even just a coffee can with a strong shake will help get good uniform results!
Also, you can do a lot of cool things with a 3d printer and some mechanical plating, you can use the plated material to act as a mold to reheat your prints and get better layer adhesion if that has been problematic! simple, neat and clever process defenitly one of my favorites.
Very interesting... Is such a thin plating really strong enough to preserve the shape of the part? I've annealed prints in fine powders but that's not without its challenges.
@@JJFX- highly depends on the metal, the material and the shape.
And how long you leave the parts in to get plated, you can get rather thick coatings
This is such a good method ! clean and easy. Great for doing it at home. I love it.
I'd be interested to see
1) how this compares against putting the print, powder and media in a bottle and shaking by hand for a minute or so
2) if this is a good starting point for an electroplating process to provide an adherent base layer
Food for thought as always!
Point 2 is especially attractive. I've had difficulty getting conductive graphite paint to work with electroplating PLA prints and sliver/copper conductive paint is even more expensive. If you can use this method to get a base copper layer, then you could electroplate a thicker layer on top. Or do another layer, like nickel or silver on top.
I have done some test with just that. It is hard because copper oxidise very quickly. I think you can use some vinegar or citric acid to make it conductive again.
🎉mind blown😮 this way of applying coating has so many of possible applications. Because it shouldn't be only metal.
It reminds me of powder coating I worked at General Electric they would spray powder coat on those fuse boxes and then bake it on. a super hard resilient finish
That looks amazing!
Robert that's brilliant idea. I had no idea this could be done. I'm going to give it go asap!
You are hands down the best content creator / educator on this platform.
I love the concept of this. It seams easy enough that I may attempt it even.
Interesting process, not one I've seen before. How badly was the PLA abraded?
Wow! Thanks for the video
Very interesting, this seems like a much more affordable option over copper electroplating! I would like to try this method to obtain a conductive layer on my parts, and follow them with a layer of nickel (via electroplating). I am planning on experimenting with the variables you mentioned to find an optimal ‘technique’. Again, great video! Thank you for the information.
Please give an update in the comments section here on your results if possible! I'm interested in doing the same thing in the near future!
Thank you :)
Maybe following peen plating with electroplating, then finishing it with metallic paint or ink would combine useful properties of all three methods. Probably depends on what you want the coating to do.
Is the peen coating electrically conductive for electroplating? If so that would make the coating much more durable.
I wonder if you could electroplate a thicker layer and then melt the plastic out like lost wax.
Beautiful and inspiring. Can you suggest a method for also playing internal surfaces, ie inside a cylinder or a 3d printed sparse matrix of material?
Just so happens that I bought the Mrs a rock tumbler for Christmas...
Hope we get a DIY rock tumbler soon. Lovely video. Am I first?
No, I am
First
Easy to make one from a sewing machine motor and 3D printed pulleys etc.
I do the electrochemical method for copper and nickel but I’ll have to give that a try
hey Robert, bu kadar izleneceğini tahmin etmiş miydin? güzel video
Much nicer than electroplating as long as the surface coating sticks.
Oh! It's shiny. Brilliant.
Ohh that's interesting. I've been using all kinds of metallic powders that I want to test with this technique. I'm trying to get away from plating because it takes too long and is a hassle. I will test this, I have already got evrything. This seems promising, thanks a lot !
Robert, another great video. Did it plate the inside of the tumbler? If so any thoughts on how to prevent that happening?
Wow very interesting. Can you do this with silver or gold powder
Oh wow. I've been meaning to try electroplating but getting some of the chemicals and acids needed for good results seems difficult in the UK. Never heard of this method before. I've already got a home made tumbler using a sewing machine motor.
Hi Robert, That's really interesting, how conductive (electrically ) is the plating?
Hi dear Robert ! It's Christmas even after time !!
Thank you VERY MUCH for this very clever and demonstrative video.
I was wondering : have you a mesh finesness to recommend, when using copper dust ?
Also, keep in mind that several coppers exists : those with phosphor traces, those with oxygen oxydules, very pure copper without oxygen or phosphorus, and those "springy" but lethal copper-beryllium alloys.
This trick is very surprising, I don't have the habit to manipulate PLA, or to mix PLA with acetone.
I was thinking that it will result in a dramatic melting, like polystyrene foam.
But seems... not really.
You have a very convincing manner to do this trick, be thanked !!
Will it develop nice green patina if you leave it in presence of little bit of vinegar?
I had never heard of this before, and now I want to give it a try. I've been interested in electroplating, but I just don't have the workspace to support it, so this may be a handy alternative. Question: when you say the acetone made the PLA sticky, are you saying that it reacted with the PLA to soften the surface (which is not what I would have expected), or just that the wet surface retained the powder as a kind of acetone/copper "mud" and the copper remained in place as the acetone evaporated?
That is spectacular. Seems like a good foundation to plate on nickel which is shiny and pretty, though not particularly healthy. Layered with gold, palladium, rhodium...
Any thoughts as to whether doing it in a vacuum would make any difference?
This is new to me. This process is used on mechanical hardware? Then it's actually robust enough to be mechanically abraded that it doesn't just dust off? Or are those metal parts coated in a protective seal too?
cool. I wonder, you could make strange shaped conducting 3D printed stuff like this i guess? I heard most of the current runs on the surface of the cables, so you could print a 3 dimensional mesh cable or structure, copper plate it and use it as a connector i guess? Perhaps use high heat resistant printing material if it needs to stay or even low heat resistant material if you would want to plastic to melt out of the conductor? I am thinking for exampe, cell anode connectors that are perfectly shaped.... an electrical circuit that runs in 3 dimensions instead of on flat surfaces so it could be squeezed better into perhaps a spherically shaped object and so on
So was the print pla or abs? I wonder because my pla will just ignore acetone...
Nice😅
Very interesting, Mr. Murray - Smith!! As a cast member on a TV automotive "reality" show, I have often been tasked with odd plating projects. I may add your method to my arsenal of tactics! No, I definitely *WILL!* Thanks, and Happy New Year!!
You said acetone makes the surface sticky. But this does only work with abs, not with pla, right?
Once copper coated it would be simple to electroplate with other materials like silver or gold, I know that skipping this step and using your graphite paint will also work prior to electroplating. 💰
can you solder to it????
So now that it's coated in copper can you use electrolysis to put another tougher coat on it? Or coat it in another metal?
Should work well if the base coating has reasonably uniform conductivity.
Never heard of this Rob, great idea and thanks for the practical demonstration! Is the busy ABS? I wasn't expecting acetone to make PLA sticky!
likewise i feel like i tried and it didn't do anything at all... can't really remember as maybe a decade ago? maybe i wasn't using real acetone or something??
Has anyone found any technique to make this work with ABS (or any other materials besides the PLA used in the video)? I tried and nothing stuck, not even after dunking it in acetone.
Excellent video Robert, how's Luke not seen a video form him for couple of months hope he's ok at university
My interest is small RF antennas. What I need is a highly electrically conductive plating. Would this process work? How about following it up with electro plating?
I'm thinking of an application requiring at least a uniform conductivity, touch sensors. A few hundred Ohms across the surface isn't a big problem in my case. Given that, electroplating for thickness shouldn't be a problem.
You should look into PVD (physical vapor deposition), you can deposit several highly conductive films on your pieces
brilliant
sir anyway we can coat it with aluminum , i m trying different ways and failing
@fluffy_unicorn859 thanks for reply mate
but this whole conundrum is to , do electroforming aluminum this is not about plating at all , but if you can plate you can make it thicker
Rob is know for this kind of stuff ,
once he told , how easily you can weld aluminum with zinc
I've also seen conductive filament on eBay, whether it's possible to use for electroplating though?
Should be.
The few "conductive" filaments I've tried was really bad. Even when I could measure some conductivity, the resistance was so high I'd hesitate to call it useful. If anyone has had better experiences I'd love to hear it but I have a hard time believing it would work well enough for electroplating.
@@JJFX- I was wondering similar, although if the piece was left in long enough, the bonds might start to build up between all the gaps and improve conductivity to the point where everything would fuse together, certainly worth trying to see if part strength improves, could also be interesting making current collector plates for batteries and super capacitors.
@@dav1dbone Well give it a shot but my experience with electroplating tells me you'd be better off just coating a print as he did or with a conductive primer. I suspect any conductive filament that might be consistent enough to do this would be too expensive to be practical.
Hi Robert. Do you ever rest you post most days. Hope you had a great Christmas.
darn it ,we now have bronze God Robert ! . [ I know all poms secretly want to migrate to aussie ,now we know why !!] . great little demo Rob [ lord of tinker cad ] ,could presumably help reinforce the print-lines, could your graphene make thing a lot stronger ?,or titanium ?. Just watched a demo of an 'Elegoo Orangestorm giga ' printer , nearly a meter cube ,and fast .may interest you .
did he say what kind of filament was used for the bust?
PLA
Couldn't you now chrome electroplate it?
Wait, does electroplating not make the print stronger?
The coatings are thin enough that it doesn't generally significantly impact the strength of the object, but it should make the surface harder. That would make it more resistant to abrasion. In theory, with a thick coat you could sharpen a cutting edge. I can't imagine any other mechanical benefits of electroplating.
@@stevenboelke6661 I was hoping for a way to make ABS prints stronger, for Robotic arms..
Using Gorilla Glue for now!
I've seen a pen that will copper plate. Just paint it with conductive ink first
Living on a boat I’d really like to see a “Real performing” wind turbine that isn’t massive that anyone could install that gives around 500w…? Most of us rely on solar in summer but have to run Generators or main engine in winter months. I look online and all I see are cheap useless Chinese rubbish giving out 100w max or £1000 UK versions that have to be on a 20’ pole! Is there “anything” that will happily put out approx 5-10amps dc in a strong breeze…?.
Switch the steel ball bearings too lead chuck in some potassium and carbon and you've got an explosive head 🗿💥🤔
Ah, you can make some nice black powder in your tumbler then figure how to drive a DIY generator with it.
2168 A DIY Water Motor - 3D Printed ----2168 A Simple Trick For Bigger And Better 3D Prints?
Awesome idea. Too bad my printer is broken.
3D printers are never broken, they're just between upgrades.
@@JJFX- I agree, but that will be a huge upgrade cause I must change the whole electronic system. Not an easy task.
@@olivierroy1301 Yeah I hear you, I've been there many times my friend. If it's a typical FDM printer simply swapping in a new mainboard is often fairly straightforward though. After a number of issues, all my FDM machines (except a belt printer) now run Klipper and I could never go back. Printer configurations are simply backed up as text files and converting common machines is easy.
Supply of raspberry pi's is finally normalizing again and there are even mainboards now that are all-in-one.
Could you then electroplate it?
"sticky and pounded with the balls" ... sorry, had to make that joke, i'm a bad person XD Thanks for sharing this technique!
basic chem!!!