thank you for the great info, that gear video was very interesting. my project probably doesn't need the strongest gears in the world, its not a jet engine, i'm going to try the BASF PLA from the video and try annealing it. as for electroplating, i'll just have to play around with it. i've watched a lot of videos and have some ideasi already ordered an Ender 3, arrives Monday. i'll get my feet wet with that and if my project gets more serous, i will splash out on a $500 machine.