Thingiverse
Copper electroforming : Joseph Prusa's buddy by f2knpw
by Thingiverse
Last crawled date: 4 years, 5 months ago
see it here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQtvPkJcJis
Or a much nicer model here : https://www.thingiverse.com/make:539674 :-)
Buddy was delivered with my Prusa Mk2s printer.
I printed it as recommended with PLA at 0.1 resolution.
Then I sanded it a little (probably not enough) and tried to electroform it with copper.
I did follow Jason's excellent tutorial : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1661301
and his recipe for electrolitic mixture : distilled water, CUSO4, H2SO4, salt and "laxative brightener" ...
Buddy was painted with graphite powder mixed in acetone, then "polished" with a paper towel and installed as the cathode into the copper sulfate bath.
After 1 hour (1V @0.3A) the result is shown on the video.
Next I polished Buddy using steel wool.
Next step will be to make some brown patina... but I don't yet have the "liver of sulfur"
This was my very first "copper platting" experiment and the result is really promizing !
And finally it is very very simple if you follow Jason's advices.
My conclusion is that this technics allows to plate any 3D object with plain copper. Really cool and cheap process.
Or a much nicer model here : https://www.thingiverse.com/make:539674 :-)
Buddy was delivered with my Prusa Mk2s printer.
I printed it as recommended with PLA at 0.1 resolution.
Then I sanded it a little (probably not enough) and tried to electroform it with copper.
I did follow Jason's excellent tutorial : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1661301
and his recipe for electrolitic mixture : distilled water, CUSO4, H2SO4, salt and "laxative brightener" ...
Buddy was painted with graphite powder mixed in acetone, then "polished" with a paper towel and installed as the cathode into the copper sulfate bath.
After 1 hour (1V @0.3A) the result is shown on the video.
Next I polished Buddy using steel wool.
Next step will be to make some brown patina... but I don't yet have the "liver of sulfur"
This was my very first "copper platting" experiment and the result is really promizing !
And finally it is very very simple if you follow Jason's advices.
My conclusion is that this technics allows to plate any 3D object with plain copper. Really cool and cheap process.