Stronger 3D Printed Parts with Electroplating

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Double the ultimate tensile strength of resin prints with electroplating. Vastly improve the stiffness as well!

In this video we electroplate SLA samples with Acid Copper and Bright Nickel, then test their tensile and ultimate strength using a universal testing machine. Stress measurements are done with a load cell and arduino, strain measuresments are done using Digital Image Correlation software DICe. Ultimate strength just about doubles, and stiffness improves dramatically for nickel coating.

PLA prints failed due to adhesion issues, so that will have to tested again in the future.

0:00 Introduction
1:30 Testing setup
3:12 PLA test example and analysis
4:32 Digital Image Correlation software and Visualization
5:53 Stress-Strain post processing
6:53 SLA results
9:02 PLA results
10:24 Electroplating downsides and discussion
14:26 I am weak

Related papers:

Saleh, Naguib, et al. "Effects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of stereolithography and laser sintered parts." Rapid prototyping journal (2004).

Zhou, Z., et al. "Rapid fabrication of metal-coated composite stereolithography parts." Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture 221.9 (2007): 1431-1440.

Kumar, TV Naveen, et al. "Effects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of FDM-PLA parts." i-Manager's Journal on Future Engineering and Technology 10.3 (2015): 29.

Olivera, Sharon, et al. "Plating on acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS) plastic: a review." Journal of materials science 51.8 (2016): 3657-3674.

Kannan, S., and D. Senthilkumaran. "Assessment of mechanical properties of Ni-coated ABS plastics using FDM process." International Journal of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering 14.3 (2014): 30-35.

[BreakingTaps]

Addendum:
- Plating thickness averaged around 70-90 microns, but was variable (and a headache to control)
- Resin: Elegoo Standard Clear. These were printed several months ago and left on my bench. I don't know if resin gets brittle over time, but if it does, that may have affected my measurements
- Test geometry: ASTM D638-14 Type IV
- Example companies that electroplate plastic: Repliform, Metal Surfaces Inc
- I tried to test some alternate nickel recipes (all-chloride in particular) but they are higher internal stress (which should make a harder deposit) but ran into adhesion issues during plating itself.
- You might notice some oscillations in the stress-strain chart data. I believe this is an artifact of in my universal test machine (you can hear it oscillate). It's probably backlash in the planetary gears or worn motor brushes or something.
- I might have talked a bit fast in this video and had some awkward segues. Sorry! It was legit freezing in my shop, hovering around 35-40F (1-4C). I kept getting distracted by my breath clouds :)

[CNCKitchen]

Amazing work and beautiful image correlation shots! This really motivates me to finally spend some time and also try this out. Keep it up!

[jotatsu]

"Powder coat" the part before doing the electroplating stack. I did a short video recently on how to. You basically put a conductive powder (graphite for example) on an ABS part, put in an acetone vapor chamber and then lightly sand and electroplate the part. The advantage is that the acetone vapor will integrate the powder inside the plastic instead of being just a surface coat.

[Jonas_Wirth]

There is something called "Conductive 3Dresyns for electronics" you can mix into your resin to make it conductive, it's the same stuff they use to make OLEDs but modified for 3D Printing.

[ElementalMaker]

Wow this is just awesome. I need to give this a try

[camofelix]

Time until this channel blows up: t-minus: soonTM

[ethanmye-rs]

Awesome! Perhaps consider a foaming filament in your FDM tests — lots of additional surface area to increase overall adhesion.

[malachilandis]

Just a couple thoughts about this:
1. When you are doing the DIC analysis, it may be helpful to select your area of interest entirely within the sample and over the area you care about (i.e. the reduced width area of the specimen). This also means that you can zoom in further to get better strain resolution on that area of the specimen since you really don't care what happens near the grips.
2. The DIC software I use is Vic-2D. They give you a way to see a "sigma" value for each image in the analysis. This value indicates the confidence of the software in the results. It can help you to know if your subset size is too small and you aren't getting good tracking of the subsets.
3. What universal testing machine are you using? If it has displacement measurement, you don't really need the virtual strain gauge.

Cool video, keep it up.

[JernD]

Every time I have seen videos recommended from this channel I have thoroughly enjoyed them. After the 3rd such video I am feeling guilty for not subscribing sooner! Great work and excited to see what else you have in store!

[KnowArt]

I would love to see you try more on removing the plastic! Is plating AND removing the plastic can be done in a home set-up for complex structures, that would be freaking amaaaazing

[sevendesign]

Just subscribed. Your channel is my new favorite. I got so much value from your experiments. I'm also working out of a really cold "shop" (soon to be 2 floor RV Bay) in Boise Idaho. You're articulation of concepts and how you perform tests to vet assumptions is super concise and well thought out. It shows a high level of effort. I'm super impressed. Thanks for sharing!

[UncleJessy]

wow! this is a fantastic video and much detail in there! Amazing work!

[stevesloan]

Watching this again 10months later.
Man you are at the highest standard regarding full visual media... it’s exaggerated now in 2022.
Love your work
🇦🇺🤜🏼🤛🏼🍀🤓😎

[bdot]

I really liked this format, well presented, quite interesting. Kinda reminds me of Applied Science. Can't wait for the next video!

[Ithirahad]

Some big DIC energy here. It's interesting how well this works!

[HuygensOptics]

Great content! As for adhesion: in my experience, nothing works as well as (fine/mild) sandblasting a surface with for example 240-400 mesh SiC. This creates a very large surface with many mechanical anchoring point for a coating.

[augurelite]

Your videos have such amazing production quality and are super thoughtful and well presented. I love learning about all these new manufacturing and testing techniques youre discovering! You should do a patreon, I'd be happy to support such a cool STEM channel!

[LanceThumping]

I think there are some interesting ideas you could try when continuing this project:
- Metal infused filament/resin: some filaments and resins have metal added to the mix in a way to allow them to either be sintered to a metal part or become conductive, this could allow you to skip the painting step entirely, could help the thermal expansion issues and may improve adhesion of the coating.
- Sintered metal filaments: In addition to what was mentioned before the electroplating process could be used to improve the dimensional accuracy of burn-out sintered prints that notoriously warp during final processing.
- Molded electrodes: printing molds for the electrodes that could allow you to move them close to the part and at a more uniform distance may improve the quality of the coating allowing it to be more even.
- 2nd generation electrodes: fully printing and plating an electrode that it is easier to plate then using it to next inside another part to even plating e.g. print a tree type structure that could be inserted into a lattice without touching to serve as the sacrificial electrode to allow for a more even coating.

[mathewpullen]

It might be possible to, for the FDM prints to use/make a solvent based conductive coating that may help with adhesion. Depending on the solvent and resins used as the base and their proportions, the coating will not only "burn" into the base material, but if the amount of resin used is small enough you can also get a shrinking affect that will bind the coating to the part harder. (See nitro-celliouse lacquer application for more information on the shrinking im talking about, it's a common thing that is talked about in the guitar repair world as it makes blending old and new finishes difficult.)

Depending on the viscosity of the base resin mix (essentially a lacquer) you may even be able to use an ultrasonic cleaner to break down graphite in the solution to create graphite nano particals for the conductive material.

I have no idea if this will work btw I don't have the setup to attempt to replicate/test at the moment.

[tdbelo]

The youngs modulus is the slope of the linear part of the graph aka elastic deformation. Its not related to Ultimate strength, its instead related to the yield strength that looks to be somewhere around 4MPa. Also, Ultimate strength is not where the part breaks. Ultimate strength is the maximum strain it will achieve but usually after that there is a necking effect and its after that, that the part breaks. Put simply, after the ultimate strength, the cross section(area) of the part becomes smaller so the stress also decreases(stress = force x area). The part breaks at a lower stress than ultimate tensile strength. Just a few corrections i thought i should mention. Great videos though, very interesting concept. Also, i was blown away by the computer vision deformation analysis! I wonder if using known dimensions on the dots would improve it, like maybe a QR code you can stick on the part and tack it that way.