All of us wish to 3D print metals, however the gear to try this remains to be past most dwelling workshops. Nevertheless, [HEN3DRIK] takes resin 3D-printed gadgets and electroplates them. Won’t be pretty much as good as printing in metallic, however it certain appears to be like metallic. As you may see within the video beneath, the sword appears to be like prefer it was crafted from highly-polished metal.
The sword comes out in 4 items. He repeats a number of instances that sanding is the important thing since you will need to have flat surfaces. Utilizing sandpaper and metal wool, he labored the components to a superb end. The components assemble alongside an M8 threaded rod to type an entire. The subsequent step was to electroplate with copper.
The sword was sufficiently big that it required upscaling his regular electroplating setup. After all, the resin isn’t conductive, so an airbrush deposits a conductive lacquer earlier than the components go within the tub. Some copper wire additionally helps the method.
When you don’t like post-processing components, this system isn’t for you. There’s a number of sanding earlier than and after electroplating. The plating itself takes endurance, particularly the copper plating. A really harmful nickel plating course of provides a shiny coating with a skinny coat of palladium. An electroplating pen provides gold accents.
The sword appears to be like wonderful, however it clearly wasn’t a fast one-hour undertaking. If you wish to do electroplating, thoughts the protection components as a number of the chemical substances are fairly nasty.
Final time we checked in on [HEN3DRIK] he was constructing a Star Wars prop. In case you are fascinated by a DIY electroplating pen, it has been performed, too.