Quote Originally Posted by LuckyImperial View Post
This "paint" might be a good primer for EP coatings. http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/...ld-nickel-841/

What you're trying to do is very cool but also very difficult, especially with plastic.
There is No need to use Conductive Paint/Coating(Graphite/copper or Nickel) with Electroless/autocatalytic plating, and thats the backbone of the system I am building..

First stage> Electroless Silver Plating, which is the simplest and Oldest form of Plating(going back to the 10th Century Al-Razi alchemist) having a shiny mirror like coating we could stop here and just apply a protective clear coat, or use tints to make it look like real gold(again thanks to Al-Razi) or any other translucent colors(they are called colored chrome sometimes in the Spray on Chrome business)

Second Stage> Electroless Gold Plating, which is also very old form of plating Silver with gold. now we can leave the piece just as it is(gold plated) and have a 18k/24k looking piece that will last for a long time

Alternative Second Stage> Electroless Copper Plating, old and simple form of plating, we can leave the piece as it is and just clear coat it to have a shiny copper mirror like effect on the pieces.

Third Stage> with a Copper plated part we can move on to Nickel or Cobalt electroplating(Cobalt has the look of real chrome) using Cobalt Sulfate only, Electroless Cobalt and Nickel plating could also be applied, copper is need it as Silver alone can be quite finicky.

Quote Originally Posted by LuckyImperial View Post
Coating a plastic part with metal is still very interesting though. Keep on searching. You might be also interested in vapor polishing: http://airwolf3d.com/2013/11/26/7-st...parts-acetone/
Wow such cool technicque, much better than Boiling Acetone... After I build my DLP printer I may want to build a FPL 3D printer too so this technique can come quite handy(dont know if the acetone will attack the UV cured resins like Makerjuice G+ I intend to use)