Copper electroforming : Joseph Prusa's buddy

prusaprinters

<p>see it here : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQtvPkJcJis">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQtvPkJcJis</a></p> <p>Or a much nicer model here : <a href="/make:539674">https://www.thingiverse.com/make:539674</a> :-)</p> <p>Buddy was delivered with my Prusa Mk2s printer.<br/> I printed it as recommended with PLA at 0.1 resolution.</p> <p>Then I sanded it a little (probably not enough) and tried to electroform it with copper.</p> <p>I did follow Jason's excellent tutorial : <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1661301">https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1661301</a></p> <p>and his recipe for electrolitic mixture : distilled water, CUSO4, H2SO4, salt and "laxative brightener" ...</p> <p>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.</p> <p>After 1 hour (1V @0.3A) the result is shown on the video.<br/> Next I polished Buddy using steel wool.<br/> Next step will be to make some brown patina... but I don't yet have the "liver of sulfur"</p> <p>This was my very first "copper platting" experiment and the result is really promizing !<br/> And finally it is very very simple if you follow Jason's advices.</p> <p>My conclusion is that this technics allows to plate any 3D object with plain copper. Really cool and cheap process.</p> <h3> How I Designed This</h3> <p>As I already said this model is not mine... You can find it easily on Joseph Prusa's site</p> Category: Sculptures