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bjd1020 WRT Addict

bjd1020

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This may be old news but for me its new. As some of you may know I have been working on a few projects lately. One included a from scratch build. Ive benn tinkering with 3D Printed Cases and heres what ive got so far. The gold filament has produced a better than expected product. Sizing is a bit tough for fitment as the printer doesnt always print to scale but once dialed in repeatability is acheivable. I have a 170 and a 7750 planned for these case. I will post in those build threads but wanted to get this result out as Im pretty excited about the product. c0d6c6d9004c89e8d8d08afb791e015d.jpg0a5ba2bfe938d8c45a4c47f239a6995d.jpg

 

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AndyHull Distinguished Member

AndyHull

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Here's a trick you might like to try if you have the necessary capability. I have no idea how good the results are likely to be, but it is on my to do list.

Polish the case to a smooth finish (1000 grit or so). Next coat the plastic with graphite to make it mildly conductive, then copper plate it.

This would then allow nickel plating on top of the copper.

Strictly speaking this is probably better described perhaps as electrotyping or as electroforming rather than electroplating, as the substrate is plastic rather than metal, but lets not split hairs.

This is one of the methods used to produce bright shiny "metal" plastic parts, and is probably much easier to attempt at home than vacuum sputtering or sintering.

Simply fine polishing the metal filament model may produce a pleasing result, without going as far as to electroplate.

 

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bjd1020 WRT Addict

bjd1020

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Caswell makes a spray. But even better there are conductive filiaments. Its def crossed my mind. What I really want to do before that is get my hands on an SLA printer. They have an much higher resolution and there are plastics that they use that can be electroplated from the start.

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HSL Distinguished Member

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12 hours ago, bjd1020 said:

Caswell makes a spray.

I'm not familiar with that brands products but I have used one conductive spray and the result depends lots of the preparation work.
Grinding with a fine sandpaper and spaying a couple of times with a grind with 2000 grit sandpaper after every layer gave a smooth surface. It's little like spraying a car.
I use the silverspray to make a gold plating.
 

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bjd1020 WRT Addict

bjd1020

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I'm not familiar with that brands products but I have used one conductive spray and the result depends lots of the preparation work.
Grinding with a fine sandpaper and spaying a couple of times with a grind with 2000 grit sandpaper after every layer gave a smooth surface. It's little like spraying a car.
I use the silverspray to make a gold plating.
 
IMG_20190305_064144.thumb.jpg.8c8d0c45a72924153151bca7b0ec0bce.jpg
Ive ordered some of the conductive filament. I have so many projects going on right now. Lol.

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HSL Distinguished Member

HSL

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The filament should do the trick too. It was a while ago i tried out these products not just on watchprojects but also on mobile phone cases, for the kids.
The only disappointment was the thickness of the plating which seemed to wear of quite fast.So it seems the product I used isn't very partyproof ;) .

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bjd1020 WRT Addict

bjd1020

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You could also use it as a mould to do resin cast / cold cast from. What resolution are you printing it at ? I'm not sure my 3D printer would be accurate enough
Not a bad idea. I have my eye on an SLA model. This one has a layer resolution of about 250 microns.

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bjd1020 WRT Addict

bjd1020

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Not a bad idea. I have my eye on an SLA model. This one has a layer resolution of about 250 microns.

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That is the one I currently have has a 250 micron resolution. The SLA is a resin base and the resolution is far better.

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