Copper electroforming : Joseph Prusa's buddy

thingiverse

I 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 followed 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 promising! And finally it is very very simple if you follow Jason's advice. My conclusion is that this technique allows to plate any 3D object with plain copper. Really cool and cheap process.