Electro plate prints.

[Mjolinor]

http://bryancera.blogspot.com.au/201...3d-prints.html

Who's first to try then.

[Roxy]

That is really cool! But I question that the wire connecting to the 3D Printed piece needs to be copper to plate with copper or silver to plate with silver. After all... anything connected to that wire gets plated, right? If you used a copper wire to plate the object with silver, very quickly the copper wire would be silver plated, right?

[curious aardvark]

now that's more like it !

Hmm, I've got a bag of carbon black in my pyro cupboard - would that work instead of graphite ?
Also copper sulphate can be had from garden shops - or at least it used to be.
Pond suppliy shops. And it's way cheaper to buy copper sulphate and make your own solution (dissolve copper sulphate in water) than buy a jar of water with a small amount of copper sulphate already dissolved :-)

Graphite look more expensive but you don't need much.

Got a spare car battery in my workshop as well (hmm, not sure what a rectifier is but I'm sure my mate the electricical engineer does), plus acetone.
Hmm, I think we have a project !

[Mjolinor]

You don't need a rectifier if you use a car battery. The hardest thing to get is sulphuric acid but it should work fine with water. Copper sulphate can be a dog to find. I needed some a few months ago and ended up scrounging it of a farmer friend, they feed it to sheep round here because the grass doesn't have enough copper in.

Chemicals generally are really hard work since all the chemists changed into pharmacies. That was just an excuse to put the prices of uncommon stuff through the roof and to stop selling the stuff that only kids with chemistry sets bought.

Doesn't matter what the wire is as long as it conducts.

[Mjolinor]

I just looked again. He doesn't use H2SO4 but copper plating works much better with a bit in the solution.

[old man emu]

To get the small amount of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid that you need, why don't you contact your local high school and arrange to give a demo of 3D printing in exchange for the chemicals from their science lab stocks?

Roxy, Yes, the copper wire would get a plating of silver, but only a few millimetres of copper wire would be exposed, so it would be no problem.

Using graphite, just check the conductivity of a heaped teaspoon of it with your multimeter.

OME

[Roxy]

Using graphite, just check the conductivity of a heaped teaspoon of it with your multimeter.

OME

Actually... Isn't this a non-issue? Obviously the graphite conducts enough to cause 'some' electroplating of metal to happen. So as soon as there is enough of this process from the start with graphite... Pretty soon we have a copper skin conducting across the entire surface area working for us. Right???

[richardphat]

Easiest way is to take pure copper penny and to put on whatever appropriate electrode. I've been electroplating quarter coins for fun with simple vineager. Okay, not the most best way to do it, but sure gives a shiny good one.

The only worry is voltage drop, if it's too big, you'll end up have a saggy plating.

Alternatively, if you can't find carbon, just take those carbon zinc battery, the core is made with carbon. Now have fun!

[Mjolinor]

Do you still have real copper in your pennies? Ours are plated steel now. I save the old ones because they are really useful and actually worth more to scrap than their face value.

[richardphat]

Yup, mine were pretty much guaranteed to be copper before 1984, say 1980 for safe. But recently the whole canadian shift toward the no more pennies solution, since it cost more to produce them than what they are worth.
Pretty sure US or UK have pure commercial grade, just need to know the year before they start using alloy.

Alternatively, those copper pipe from the hardware store could work, all copper pipe must be above 99.9% according to the copper developpment and association.
http://www.copper.org/applications/p...pipe_stds.html