Stronger 3D Printed Parts with Electroplating
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- Опубліковано 22 лип 2024
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Double the ultimate tensile strength of resin prints with electroplating. Vastly improve the stiffness as well!
In this video we electroplate SLA samples with Acid Copper and Bright Nickel, then test their tensile and ultimate strength using a universal testing machine. Stress measurements are done with a load cell and arduino, strain measuresments are done using Digital Image Correlation software DICe. Ultimate strength just about doubles, and stiffness improves dramatically for nickel coating.
PLA prints failed due to adhesion issues, so that will have to tested again in the future.
NOTE! Nickel allergies are common, and can develop at any time, so be careful if you play around with nickel plating and handle the prints afterwards. More info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_...
DICe software: github.com/dicengine/dice
0:00 Introduction
1:30 Testing setup
3:12 PLA test example and analysis
4:32 Digital Image Correlation software and Visualization
5:53 Stress-Strain post processing
6:53 SLA results
9:02 PLA results
10:24 Electroplating downsides and discussion
14:26 I am weak
Related papers:
Saleh, Naguib, et al. "Effects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of stereolithography and laser sintered parts." Rapid prototyping journal (2004).
Zhou, Z., et al. "Rapid fabrication of metal-coated composite stereolithography parts." Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture 221.9 (2007): 1431-1440.
Kumar, TV Naveen, et al. "Effects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of FDM-PLA parts." i-Manager's Journal on Future Engineering and Technology 10.3 (2015): 29.
Olivera, Sharon, et al. "Plating on acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic: a review." Journal of materials science 51.8 (2016): 3657-3674.
Kannan, S., and D. Senthilkumaran. "Assessment of mechanical properties of Ni-coated ABS plastics using FDM process." International Journal of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering 14.3 (2014): 30-35. - Наука та технологія
Addendum:
- Buff Benchy: www.thingiverse.com/thing:4247106
- Plating thickness averaged around 70-90 microns, but was variable (and a headache to control)
- Resin: Elegoo Standard Clear. These were printed several months ago and left on my bench. I don't know if resin gets brittle over time, but if it does, that may have affected my measurements
- Test geometry: ASTM D638-14 Type IV
- CNC Kitchen strength test playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PLEOQTmIWJ_rncRcWmjQIvMKFAeM071CXM.html
- DICe software: github.com/dicengine/dice
- Technical details about DICe algorithms: github.com/dicengine/dice/tree/master/doc/reports
- Example companies that electroplate plastic: Repliform, Metal Surfaces Inc
- I tried to test some alternate nickel recipes (all-chloride in particular) but they are higher internal stress (which should make a harder deposit) but ran into adhesion issues during plating itself.
- You might notice some oscillations in the stress-strain chart data. I believe this is an artifact of in my universal test machine (you can hear it oscillate). It's probably backlash in the planetary gears or worn motor brushes or something.
- I might have talked a bit fast in this video and had some awkward segues. Sorry! It was legit freezing in my shop, hovering around 35-40F (1-4C). I kept getting distracted by my breath clouds :)
One thing that I found when using a graphite-acrylic paint for electroplating, it helped to buff the surface of the painted object after painting. Something about smoothing out (and connecting?) the graphite layer helped give a more even plate.
About resin getting brittle over time, it definitely does. Especially if left exposed to UV/sunlight. And especially if you don't post-cure the parts (I can't remember if you mentioned doing that). It will slowly sit there forming more and more crosslinks and becoming more brittle
Stronger prints we all want - however a few words of warning: As nickel can be harmful to skin, its use in daily products must be regulated
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_allergy - once you've got it, it takes less and less to get the rash.
If the print has to come into contact with skin, it is best to plate with an inert metal (Aluminum is actually a great choice, but electroplating it 😲) - catlogix.com/pages/what-metals-are-hypoallergenic
8:32 - Copper can be soft (plated?) and hard/(heat)annealed depending on how it is treated. Soft copper can elongate quite a bit (up to 20%) - www.fiskalloy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Tensile-Elongation-Fisk-Alloy.pdf
Truly a cool investigative video :ø)
@@maxwellfire Welp, good to know. I probably should have mentioned that in the video directly then, I wonder how much it affected the results. If/when I do a followup I'll be sure to mention.
@@EgonSorensen Oof, that's a good point and I really should have mentioned it. Will add a note to the description. My brother has a nickel allergy and it's no fun for sure. :(
Amazing work and beautiful image correlation shots! This really motivates me to finally spend some time and also try this out. Keep it up!
Thanks for stopping by Stefan! Your work was definitely a huge inspiration, and I'd love to see your results if you ever decide to try. I'd trust them a lot more haha :) I have a new appreciation for how much work this kind of testing is, and frankly, I'm skeptical of my data even after trying to only include the most conservative results. Just so many variables: conductive layer, plating recipe/time/temperatures/current density, grip strength in jaws (too much can crack the plating, too little slips), axial misalignment, temperature... the list just goes on! Really appreciate the work you do to get such nice results :)
@@BreakingTaps You should also investigate electroplating with conductive filament. Is raw conductive filament doesn't work well maybe try coating the filament with some conductive ink or something in the way make anything did for multi color prints by changing markers.
@@BreakingTaps By using open source software, you are making your work accessible to others. Thank you!
Stefan, I think this could be the solution to the re-melting problem. Chemically plate with Copper, re-melt, chemically dissolve the Copper (Or don't...)
Lots of work? Yes. More work than dealing with the salt? Maybe. Will it work perfectly? I'll eat my hat if it doesn't.
From the resources I could find, PPA+CF filament and theoretically ABS/PC+CF filament should have the lowest thermal expansions amongst thermoplastics. Maybe an ASA/PC+CF, since ABS with the Butadiene removed is frequently used in metal coating.
(main source: https :// omnexus . specialchem . com/polymer-properties/properties/coefficient-of-linear-thermal-expansion )
They should be closer to the thermal expansion rate of copper that I have found online, but I'm not sure how useful that is.
Would you even want to re-melt a CF-infused filament? Even without re-melting, couldn't you find another, cheaper material to make a metal-coated part? Maybe you'd rather 3D print a mold for a thermoset with lower thermal expansion rate, fill it with graphite, and coat the castings with metal.
"Powder coat" the part before doing the electroplating stack. I did a short video recently on how to. You basically put a conductive powder (graphite for example) on an ABS part , put in an acetone vapor chamber and then lightly sand and electroplate the part. The advantage is that the acetone vapor will integrate the powder inside the plastic instead of being just a surface coat.
Awesome Idea, I will try that soon
Interesting, will check it out! That seems like a solid method to get better adhesion.
@@BreakingTaps
Those Unplated numbers are higher than Zytel.
What do you want?
Now that sounds like something to try.
Would a conductive filament be conductive enough to work?
There is something called "Conductive 3Dresyns for electronics" you can mix into your resin to make it conductive, it's the same stuff they use to make OLEDs but modified for 3D Printing.
The advantage of this over conductive paint, is that you might be able to plate things like through holes that are too thin or long to paint. I wonder if embedding small tunnels of plated metal throughout a part would improve the strength
@@michaelandersen7535 it undoubtedly would, thanks for telling us about the conductive resin!
"200€" paint it is then
Time until this channel blows up: t-minus: soonTM
where do I go to buy tapscoin?
@Dylan Lovell buy spiffcoin instead
Wow this is just awesome. I need to give this a try
Awesome! Perhaps consider a foaming filament in your FDM tests - lots of additional surface area to increase overall adhesion.
Woah neat, I had no idea that existed. Just looked around and that stuff looks very cool, might have to pick up a roll to play with. Cheers!
@@BreakingTaps most foaming filaments are a closed cell foam, so the surface increase would still only be on the more "textured" surface. But def worth trying out
@@BreakingTaps is it possible to electroplate glass? Specifically glass on the back of a phone? I have a s23 ultra and was wanting to plate gold on the back
Every time I have seen videos recommended from this channel I have thoroughly enjoyed them. After the 3rd such video I am feeling guilty for not subscribing sooner! Great work and excited to see what else you have in store!
Thanks!
Yeah same for me. I subscribed because you brought that topic 😁
Some big DIC energy here. It's interesting how well this works!
I really liked this format, well presented, quite interesting. Kinda reminds me of Applied Science. Can't wait for the next video!
wow! this is a fantastic video and sooooo much detail in there! Amazing work!
Just subscribed. Your channel is my new favorite. I got so much value from your experiments. I'm also working out of a really cold "shop" (soon to be 2 floor RV Bay) in Boise Idaho. You're articulation of concepts and how you perform tests to vet assumptions is super concise and well thought out. It shows a high level of effort. I'm super impressed. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! High-five to shops in the great white north :) The struggle is real. Hope the snow load hasn't been too bad for you this year! I hear the mountain states and midwest have been getting buried! We've faired a little better here, mostly just cold but not a ridiculous amount of snow
wow! super coll !! U'r obviously learning!! testing stuff sounds solid !! good luck next round!
Incredible work, subbed!
I would love to see you try more on removing the plastic! Is plating AND removing the plastic can be done in a home set-up for complex structures, that would be freaking amaaaazing
you have earned my subscribership. Good work!
can you try making helical antennas with electro plating?
That's a really interesting idea! I admit to knowing nothing about antennas and their designs, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Copper electroplating gives a very conductive layer, nearly as good as copper on it's own. I wonder if you could generate some really funky "AI designed" antennas that way too
@@BreakingTaps Matlab can optimize Antenna designs. However I have only used it to optimize parameters of known designs and don't know if it could generate it's own design or modify them in ways other than the generally known parameters
@@BreakingTaps I imagine plating with copper would be a breath of fresh air compared to prior videos!
On a somewhat different subject, I have an idea. Plate something with copper, then zinc, or vice versa, then heat it to fuse the two layers into brass. I know zinc has a lower boiling point than copper melts, but I suspect it will diffuse into the copper well enough before that happens. Also, plating first with zinc then copper might reduce the zinc vapors. I have read that zinc doesn't electroplate easily, but remelting should reduce the need for a "good" plate.
The benefit is that brass has substantially better mechanical strength then either element alone, and the properties can be changed easily by altering ratios.
@@superdupergrover9857 I've tried to get this effect on parts I've cast/machined out of zinc, and could never get it to work. Copper gets on nicely, but no diffusion. Tried different heating temperatures too - at the high end you can get some rather intense blue colours (something weird involving the oxides afaik but not too sure) but the golden brass colour is the one thing I've never seen ;)
@Peter Zemlyanukha Interesting! So for 3mm (100ghz), that'd mean a skin effect depth of 0.2062 microns (according to a random calculator) and surface quality > 0.15mm. That seems very doable with SLA and plating! Most of my electroplatings end up around 70-100 microns, and resin printers can pretty reliably hit 0.01mm layer height. Shape accuracy can be tricky with SLA printers sometimes due to warping when pulling off the FEP film, but enough supports usually fixes that.
Does the plastic have to be removed afterwards? That'd be the big disadvantage to SLA, removing the cured resin is difficult/impossible (usually have to burn it out)
Your videos have such amazing production quality and are super thoughtful and well presented. I love learning about all these new manufacturing and testing techniques youre discovering! You should do a patreon, I'd be happy to support such a cool STEM channel!
Thanks, really appreciate the kind words! I was holding off on something like a Patreon until I hit a milestone like 10k subscribers, but we just hit that so maybe I'll start considering it more seriously. But I appreciate the views and comments more, doing this to help spread around all the cool science in the world that's hid in journal articles :) Cheers!
@@BreakingTaps wow congrats!!! Keep up the fantastic work my friend :)
Watching this again 10months later.
Man you are at the highest standard regarding full visual media... it’s exaggerated now in 2022.
Love your work
🇦🇺🤜🏼🤛🏼🍀🤓😎
>has a shop/lab where everything is insanely precision
>heats it up everytime as he comes in by like 30c so everything is moving for the next 6 hours
another great video. thank you!
Great video! Thanks!
Been wanting to do the same for some functional parts that I believe will benefit strongly from electroplating. Subscribed!
this channel is the definition of quality content
Just a couple thoughts about this:
1. When you are doing the DIC analysis, it may be helpful to select your area of interest entirely within the sample and over the area you care about (i.e. the reduced width area of the specimen). This also means that you can zoom in further to get better strain resolution on that area of the specimen since you really don't care what happens near the grips.
2. The DIC software I use is Vic-2D. They give you a way to see a "sigma" value for each image in the analysis. This value indicates the confidence of the software in the results. It can help you to know if your subset size is too small and you aren't getting good tracking of the subsets.
3. What universal testing machine are you using? If it has displacement measurement, you don't really need the virtual strain gauge.
Cool video, keep it up.
Thanks for the notes! Will keep that in mind for future runs (and will check out Vic-2D). My UTM is an old manual unit I snagged off ebay. Had to fabricate my own jaws and wire up a load cell, no displacement measurement which is why I went with optical. But I'm looking into adding a glass scale to get displacement readouts instead (or in addition to) optical DIC. Would be nice to have some extra data to corroborate results on a DIY machine like this :)
5:54 "Data lol", the modern equivalent of "a guy in very small glasses with a slide rule" ;)
Re apparent increased strength of the plastic interior of your compound part: perhaps the metal plating is interacting with potential crack nucleation points?
That was exactly my thought.
...which might point to other ways of using surface treatments to improve printed resin strength. I'd be interested to know whether a very light copper plating -- perhaps not even enough to form a continuous layer -- has any effect.
I've found ABS in acetone to be a great binder for graphite based coating prints for electroplating.
Love the video!
I know an excellent video when I see it. Subbed.
More please !
Brilliant !
I would love to see you try the PLA again after salt annealing it!
It would be really interesting to see how sputtering magnetron platting. That might give you a much more consistent plate and eliminates the need for preping the parts. Super glad I came across your channel.
Great content and analysis! Your observation at 8:35 seems like a similar effect to why a traditional bow benefits from a cloth or fiberglass backing... it reinforces the wood fibers that would otherwise snap with tension and allows for more compression prior to failure. I’m guessing this may well be a result not just noise!
That makes sense! I hadn't thought about it from that angle but it seems reasonable that it's acting as the "sandwhich material" in a composite and together they get better mechanical properties than alone. Neat!
I would use silane for adhesion; probably a primary methyl di-siloxane.
You could use a two part urethane with isocyanate catalyst, add your choice of silane to it, then blend conductive material into that.
The blend ratios used could be tailored to the exact performance characteristics you want.
I work with that kind of stuff often; specifically on the adhesion vs cohesion balance in specific blends of aliphatic urethanes. It's a lot simpler than it sounds.
Hi! I really love your videos, keep on the good work! One way to make better adhesion between the coating and the graphite would be, to use ABS parts, and the conductive ink needs to be something thats dissolve abs. Graphite suspended in abs slurry would be a good option i think.
Hi, how do you manage to coat the complex lattice structures (hard-to-reach surfaces) with graphite paint evenly?
Very interesting and very well presented! I wonder how non-plated PLA compares to plated resin.
Great content! As for adhesion: in my experience, nothing works as well as (fine/mild) sandblasting a surface with for example 240-400 mesh SiC. This creates a very large surface with many mechanical anchoring point for a coating.
Oh awesome, will give that a shot! I have a large tub of SiC sitting around, just need to work out a sandblasting setup (picked up the SiC for sintering purposes, ironically). Have you tried chemical etching out of curiosity?
@@BreakingTaps actually no, main problem with adhesion is that different polymer types neither mix nor adhere. So a conductive topcoat should preferably be based on the same polymer as the bulk. If your resin printer has sufficient resolution, you might consider printing small T-grooves or holes as anchors on the surface.
@@HuygensOptics Noted, thanks for the tips! Will try that out next time I need to do some plating :)
@@BreakingTaps I know lye works for etching PLA. Possibly should work for resin too or strong acids might work.
Sandblasting was a game changer for me. I've tried polyurethane, lacquer, and PVA (acrylic) based paints with copper particles and again all three with graphite particles. None of which perform as well on plastics and glass as the silver conductive paint from RioGrande. That paint is too expensive and has some aggressive solvent in it (butadiene/butyl somethingerother). I haven't tried Rio's copper solution because the don't offer a solvent/thinner/brush cleaner for it, and throwing away brushes becomes expensive.
I've found that for graphite pigments, running graphite gouging electrodes through a pencil sharpener and grinding the resulting powder down in a mortar and pestle still isn't fine enough for good results. Buffing between layers and/or before plating helped decrease resistance and improved deposition of a complete layer in the plating bath.
Very much looking forward to trying the ABS/acetone/graphite idea seen elsewhere in these comments.
Also looking forward to trying the EMF sheilding spray seen in the video (same stuff as inside plastic laptop chassis, looks like my silver based stuff?) and copper based automotive head gasket repair sprays.
I think you have earned my subscription.
Definitely earned my subscription, it would be cool to see mecanical propeties of cold porcelain, to see how gears made of that material hold up, there is no documentation in such thing I believe, maybe it's not a great idea Idk xD
And If... You use conductive PLA instead a regular PLA for electroplating?
++ think I might be out of excuses for not trying conductive filament! I would guess that it plates easily and wouldnt have any of the issues I had.
Conductive PLA is more expensive and has worse mechanical properties.
Maybe it would be better to print with two filaments, and make the outer shell from conductive PLA. I expect there will be some issues with that too, but at least it would be much more economical. In this case you can precisely control which surface you want to coat which could be useful in some cases.
what resin are you using?
siraya tech blue is pretty good for tensile strength. after going from a real brittle elegoo resin to siraya tech i dont want to go back.
I was really hoping you would show the process of plating the plastic with the metals as i wanted to try that myself.
Ah, sorry about that! If you watch the microlattice video starting around this timestamp (ua-cam.com/video/tpO5DgiCgyM/v-deo.html) it covers the process. tl;dr: coat in a graphite "ink" to make it conductive, then submerge in plating bath. Attach one electrode to the part, and another electrode into the bath itself.
Hello, does this method increases the thermal conductivity of the material?
Great video. What if you increase surface area of the part, will the strength grow linearly?
that tinkling sound is actually quite common in ceramics when cooling too fast, but i guess the metal/resin interface is also susceptible to it.
I used to deal with platers for work, what I understood on how they electroless nickel plate plastic was the plastics actually have metal particles in them.
I wonder if there's a similar material for pla. Or a powder suspension in resin.
Would a resin with a conductive additive help with stronger or more consistent plating?
I really like this topic,just a 3d beginner but im also getting into metal manipulation, so this is totally got my attention. I'm gonna have to learn more computer skills I can see. But I like it when you reference programs ,and let people know things that are good and bad about them. Saves me loads of time when I'm weak on terminology.
So keep on going I wanna do a metal coated lattice now.
I WAS KINDA CURIOUS ABOUT NICKLE IRON,AND COULD YOU MAKE SOME KIND OF LIGHTWEIGHT BATTERY SOMEHOW.
SINCE ITS SUCH A THINWALL STRUCTURE.
ITS DEFINITELY A COOL TOPIC TO PLAY AROUND WITH.
THANX
What if you mix some metal flake into your resin? Can you get a somewhat conductive print that will be easier to electroplate?
i'm at 3:52 in the video and found myself exclaiming, out loud, alone with no one to hear: "This is SO SICK" lol
In the printing industry, to produce an electrotype from a non-conductive master, they would do electroless plating first to establish a conductive layer, followed by electroplating to produce a robust electroplate.
Have you tried annealing the plated pla or even bringing it up to the flow temp?
8:50 maybe the phenomenon making the strain higher for resin is the fact that cracks have a harder time propagating due to the presence of a more ductile material in the surface, where fractures usually propagate from, mainly in fatigue scenarios.
But of a tangent but i wonder if there are any castable materials that you can sinter/anneal afterwards. Print the mold then crank out the parts.
How does the auto-industry gold plated plastic logos? Is it similar to your process?
Hey man! Great video! Adhesion comes from binder, so maybe try something other than acrylic. I've used oil based polyurethane with graphite for copper plating on Nylon and it gives a much stronger bond than acrylic.
What about using a sputter coater for the first/conductive coating and then electroplating on top?
Holy fetch that is awesome
Hope you can get the follow up video done soon
Can you try spraying parts with a "strength" coating like line-x? Wouldn't mind seeing those results as well.
now I wonder what if any materials would let you put shear thickening fluid in the infill of a lattice like that
for electroplating, can you insert additional electrodes into the mesh to make current more even?
Yep! Adding multiple electrodes is a common way to get better or more even coverage. I used two anodes (one on each side of the test sample), and wrapped a length of magnet wire around the part as the cathode to help distribute electricity better.
Thanks
What about titanium sputter coating, like using a vacuum chamber and a heated titanium wire element?
Is it possible to use the electroless plating as a substitute for the conductive “ink” mixture? I think it might provide both better adhesion and more consistent electroplating after as you would have a very uniform conductive surface throughout the part that may combat some of the variance in thickness of the electroplated surface.
Well now. Recently there has been a lot of talk about baking samples in a salt matrix above the glass transition temp. Maybe the metal shell can serve that purpose instead of salt?
Woah, that's a really interesting idea! Probably depends how much outgassing the remelting causes (hopefully none), and if the metal layer is thick enough to support it's own weight once the inner plastic stops contributing. What a fun idea, I'll see if I can incorporate that when I sort out the adhesion issues for the FDM equivalent of this video (or maybe just mail a few samples to Stefan to test 😇)
sounds like a great idea, but i would be worried about the metal breaking when the internal stresses from uneven cooling start to release.
@@TheLordinio That is a good point. My hope is that the metal will yield enough elastically to hold the plastic in place - but be strong enough to keep its form. We won't know until someone tries :P
Might be able to do both, metal holding the surface tolerance (maybe) a bit better and the salt/sand providing thermal mass and support when in plastic regime.
@@jcims Interesting point!
I remember a decade ago I read a paper where they measure extremely strain of material by shoot x-ray through the measured material. And measure the rayleigh scattering resulted from x-ray travel through the material's atoms. As the material stretch, the spacing between atoms increases, so the scattering also changes. Pretty interesting way of measure micro-strain without destroying the material, can even monitor jet engine combustion chamber while it's running. Not sure if the author manage to commercialize the technology, or it just got stuck in a lab forever.
Wow, that's a wild technique! I can see it being useful for really critical things like jet engines but yeah, sounds like a nightmare to fine tune and get working reliably!
Could you make the resin conductive with graphite that way the plating is bonding directly to the print
Awesome thumbnail
Graphite spray seems like it would have adhesion issues. Looking forward to this repeating with the copper silver spray.
Well Done, SUBBED ✔️ : I think this is a vitally important issue(more functional prototypes). The idea of having a slightly compressed, additively manufactured plastic core surrounded by a structural(...thicker/high yield strength) & slightly tensioned metallic shell, if this process can be done quickly, cheaply and with a uniform, repeatable metal thickness, this is an excellent way to make VERY FUNCTIONAL parts.
The plastic AM 3D printed core helps stop the thin-ish metal shell(has to be thicker then this test though) from buckling failure and pretensions the metal shell too(assuming a strong metal material is the coating material).
This made me think of rotational molded parts and how strong they get when filled with an expanding foam (example golf cart roof, the ones that are foam filled are tough as can be, even though they are just a soft plastic outer shell with a foam core).
I think other metal deposition methods should be considered too(cost effective and safe vapor deposition,,,my 1st choice, but how??).
Regarding the copper elongation at around 08:40, could it be that copper is working as an "spreader" of the strain along the plastic part, ie, spreading the strain plastic sees, so the plastic part can take more strain before breaking?
I suggest you look into pulse - reverse pulse electrodeposition.
You can use the Randles Sevcik equation do derive the diffusion coefficients for the ions of interest. Then, you can calculate the electrical double layer thickness and tune it with the pulse/reverse pulse duration and/or the deposited species concentration.
In this way, you can electrodeposit a uniform layer regardless of the complex geometry of the sample.
I have been doing some testings on my own. What i found is that the plastic you plate must be really rigid, with no flex at all. I was plating on PETG sheets and the copper plating was delaminating and peeling off like a thin sheet of aluminium foil. I now plate thicker pieces with resin and fiberglass and it is much less prone to delaminating since I cannot flex these parts at all.
Love the content you are producing! You referenced papers during this video. Can you post the links to your references and brief description of their applicability to the discussion or process? Thanks!
Added some papers to the video description! I admit I wasn't too rigorous with my literature review for this video, mainly because I'd seen a lot of it in passing for other projects (like the microlattice video) so it was just floating around in my head. There is also a set of literature about electroplating engineering grade injection plastics (PEEK, PEI, etc). There is also related field called electroforming which is used to reproduce molds/mandrels, typically with Nickel. NASA used this technique to fabricate rocket nozzles at one point, electroforming a mandrel to create a replica of a nozzle, detaching from the mandrel and then electroplating more metal on top to thicken it up. Sorta the original additive manufacturing before metal 3d printing was available :)
@@BreakingTaps Thanks for adding some reference materials. May be worth mentioning, but read somewhere nickel plating is a useful technique for short run injection molds produced by SLA or FDM.
I have read some papers on experiments to produce electroformed rocket propellant tanks. Would you like more references? I think I have a few somewhere in my collection.
You have posted some awesome processes and I appreciate your work. There are plenty more vids I need to plow through!
I can't believe this guy only has 14k subs he's very smart and well spoken
Have you tried conductive filament?
It might be possible to, for the FDM prints to use/make a solvent based conductive coating that may help with adhesion. Depending on the solvent and resins used as the base and their proportions, the coating will not only "burn" into the base material, but if the amount of resin used is small enough you can also get a shrinking affect that will bind the coating to the part harder. (See nitro-celliouse lacquer application for more information on the shrinking im talking about, it's a common thing that is talked about in the guitar repair world as it makes blending old and new finishes difficult.)
Depending on the viscosity of the base resin mix (essentially a lacquer) you may even be able to use an ultrasonic cleaner to break down graphite in the solution to create graphite nano particals for the conductive material.
I have no idea if this will work btw I don't have the setup to attempt to replicate/test at the moment.
8:33 Could it be that the breaking of the uncoated resin is due to surface defects like when glass breaks, and the copper coating is defeating those surface defects?
try with conductive filaments? There's some conductive graphene pla out there, I wonder if that would work (it's expensive though)
I wonder, would packing the plated part in salt (as CNC kitchen has shown) and then remelting/annealing it together do anything interesting vs just plating or just remelting?
Did you ever re-visit this idea with different adhesion ideas? I'm wondering if you could make PLA handle high temperature better with plating but seems like delamination would be a big problem after what you dealt with
you could try copper infused pla as the base material
Whats the strongest metal that can be used for electroplating, and is it possible to make a really strong alloy that can also be used for electroplating?
Hmm, probably nickel or one of it's variants (iron-nickel, etc). "Alloys" can't be plated very easily, it's limited to a select handful of metals and their binary/trinary combinations. E.g. Nickel, or Iron, or Iron-Nickel, or Iron-Nickel-Cobalt. Unfortunately not possible to plate complex alloys like stainless or even regular carbon steel, since they have many other ingredients that just don't work with the electroplating process.
Thumbnail : what 3d printing looks like in Super Sentai show.
You could put graphite in the resin. I wonder if that could make it conductive enough.
The extra elongation may be due to the copper spreaing the stretch-zone over more of the part. Normally, the weakest zone of the part will begin stretching first, and as it stretches, becomes weaker, thereby further concentrating the stretch in that zone. The copper makes it something of a composite, so the resin will stretch locally, but then hit a limit where it has to stretch the copper, which makes the next weakest zone _elsewhere_ in the piece. So instead of one zone stretching the entire amount, you get less stretching, spread all over the piece, until you hit a failure point. This is _why_ composites are so great overall.
Seems like you could exploit the plating separation phenomenon, as a way to create an exact metal negative of a PLA object, if you can figure out how to adjust the temperatures to achieve a reliably repeatable separation after the plating solidifies.
I wonder if something along the lines of concrete/rebar would be possible here to help with the delamination that's happening with temperature swings. Maybe a test sample with small holes in various directions would be more resistant to that problem at the cost of a little overall strength / stiffness. I seem to recall there being a paper about inserting small voids in an fdm print to increase stiffness and this might look a little similar.
What about using graphene powder to mix with molten plastic and use this mixture of PLA+graphene to print 3D parts?
There are all kinds of resins, is there also a conductive one?
I'm not aware of any commercially available resins that are conductive, although you can buy additives from companies (e.g. www.3dresyns.com/collections/conductive-materials) which make resin conductive. These additives are quite expensive however, that company sells them for ~200 euro. The main difficulty is keeping the conductive additive suspended which I think means they end up with exotic nanoparticles and the like :)
Have you tried putting an electroplated part in the oven? I wonder how an oven cured part would work with high temperatures...if a high metal filament was used could this be a viable option to sintering but without the removal of the binder, so the binder remains inside of the part. Just thinking out loud here :)
You could always make your own PCB with this technique for small projects!
The platings themselves are also intrinsically stressed. Especially the chloride nickel. Less so for the copper but it's not soft like annealed copper would be. In my own shitty attempts with chloride nickel I heard those crackling sounds during plating. It peeled itself off the plastic strips I was trying to plate. It just cracked and curled inward. The thicker plates I got without cracking were very hard but brittle.
You could try sulfamate nickel for a lower stress. It's used to electroform massive solid pieces of metal.
The youngs modulus is the slope of the linear part of the graph aka elastic deformation. Its not related to Ultimate strength, its instead related to the yield strength that looks to be somewhere around 4MPa. Also, Ultimate strength is not where the part breaks. Ultimate strength is the maximum strain it will achieve but usually after that there is a necking effect and its after that, that the part breaks. Put simply, after the ultimate strength, the cross section(area) of the part becomes smaller so the stress also decreases(stress = force x area). The part breaks at a lower stress than ultimate tensile strength. Just a few corrections i thought i should mention. Great videos though, very interesting concept. Also, i was blown away by the computer vision deformation analysis! I wonder if using known dimensions on the dots would improve it, like maybe a QR code you can stick on the part and tack it that way.
Whoops, that's a great clarification thanks! I probably explained some of it poorly, and definitely didn't myself understand the difference in maximum strain vs breaking. It probably didn't end up mattering for the resin prints since they are so brittle there wasn't any necking, but when I get back to PLA that'll be an important thing for me to get right I suspect :) Maybe the adhesion issues saved me from saying some very wrong things about the PLA tests on camera :)
That's what you get when a biologist tries to explain engineering terms haha.
Regarding the speckle pattern, I actually had the same thought (was thinking about making some kind of mask I could spray). But apparently a fine, random stochastic pattern is considered better than anything with a regular pattern. To be honest I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it helps when filming with a slower speed camera, e.g. to prevent the pattern from shifting one "multiple" between frames and looking like it didn't move? Not sure.
Just a small correction to your correction. The ultimate strength is the maximum (engineering) stress that the part will feel, not the maximum strain.
Stress is force/area not force*area. When the coupon necks, the area decreases. This actually increases the stress not decreases it .
When you see the graph of a stress vs strain they are usually plotting engineering strain. This uses the original cross section of the part for calculating the stress. As the part necks, the coupon is able to withstand less force. That's the downturn you see on the plot.
If you were to keep track of the true area of the necking coupon, the decrease in area would usually more than compensate for the decrease in force. This means that the true stress continues to increase after the ultimate strength (but the part as a whole is able to bear less load). A good picture of this can be found here:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stress_v_strain_A36_2.svg
With the true stress in blue and the engineering stress in red. 1 shows the ultimate strength.
I was also blown away by how he made the optical tracking work.
Teflon co-deposited with nickel is very popular for coating internal firearm components. Boron with or without teflon in nickel is popular too, but I don't know if that is truly alloyed with the nickel or entrained with it.
Oh interesting, I'll have to do some more reading on that. Nickel/Teflon printed "bearings" or rails could be very interesting. I saw some mentions of Boron but didn't look too closely, I'm also not sure how it ends up getting deposited. So many rabbit holes to get lost in :)
@@BreakingTaps Don't get me started on rabbits :)
@@BreakingTaps Now that I have thought about it, the boron must be in the form of hexagonal boron nitride, properly alloyed with the nickel, or consist of nano-particles. Metallic boron is like 9 Mohs scale, so even microscopic particles entrained in nickel would basically be a grindstone. Infact, that is actually done but with diamonds or cubic boron nitride.
have you thought about conductive filiment?
I think there are some interesting ideas you could try when continuing this project:
- Metal infused filament/resin: some filaments and resins have metal added to the mix in a way to allow them to either be sintered to a metal part or become conductive, this could allow you to skip the painting step entirely, could help the thermal expansion issues and may improve adhesion of the coating.
- Sintered metal filaments: In addition to what was mentioned before the electroplating process could be used to improve the dimensional accuracy of burn-out sintered prints that notoriously warp during final processing.
- Molded electrodes: printing molds for the electrodes that could allow you to move them close to the part and at a more uniform distance may improve the quality of the coating allowing it to be more even.
- 2nd generation electrodes: fully printing and plating an electrode that it is easier to plate then using it to next inside another part to even plating e.g. print a tree type structure that could be inserted into a lattice without touching to serve as the sacrificial electrode to allow for a more even coating.
These are really great ideas, adding to the list of things to look into! Particularly the molded and printed/plated electrodes. I wonder how long they would last before they "burned through" their plating. Hmmm...
@@BreakingTaps Based on some quick reading and my limited knowledge, you can go crazy thick with electroplating.
So if you go with a really thick layer that is just small enough to not short, it'd probably last quite awhile for the thinner coats on the primary parts.
It'd be really cool to get several platings done before having to "recharge" the electrode.