Appreciate the safety reminder. So many channels don’t show that they wear PPE while they work, making it easy for newbies to omit.

The second method using the Alclad metal lacquer paints can be improved by using the chrome paint again instead of the gold, you add a little yellow and a small amount of red food colouring gel to it, it produces a highly reflective gold paint. A prop maker on YT documented this method when he was painting medals and showed how it holds up on his wearable C3PO costume. His name is Gordon Tarpley, he has useful tips on technique too.

Honestly,. the minimal effort resin one is the most screen-accurate, as the commbadges have a more satin finish than plated. Not to mention, that's pretty much exactly how they were done for the show, too.

7:11 electro polishing Electropolishing is an electrochemical process used to polish, passivate, and deburr metal parts. During this process, the metal part is submerged in an electrolyte solution and connected as the anode (positive electrode), while a cathode (negative electrode) is also submerged in the same solution. When an electric current is applied, metal ions are removed from the surface of the part, smoothing and polishing it. The process can refine surfaces at the microscopic level, remove burrs, and improve the corrosion resistance of the metal. Commonly electropolished metals include stainless steel, aluminum, and nickel alloys.

This is pretty incredible for RF filters/antennas! In radio frequency design the full conductor can be replaced by a thin copper sufrace due to the skin effect. This means you can 3D print most (very expensive and often custom) RF components now!

Thank you for leaving the outtakes in when talking about the chrome paint, as a fellow german I can relate "boah"

wow, the sound after electroplating was so surprising!

Thank you so much for showing us you using gloves, and respirators. The amount of channels that either don't or don't themselves take safety measures is WAY to high.

Try metallic lacquer some time! You spray a coat of gloss black and a coat of silver/gold, buff it with cotton, and finish it with a layer of clear. It takes a couple hours from start to finish and you can buy it in rattle cans or airbrush-ready.

Great video! While you used a black base- layer for both colors in the medium phase, If you used a red base-coat for the gold one, it would read as much more "golden"

Another important reminder for working with resin prints, the actual resin dust is pretty horrifically bad for you too. I suggest a mask and ideally a vacuum cleaner turned on with the nozzle near to the print to just suck up the dust as it's made. (Ideally it'd have a hepa filter too)

Kudos for highlighting the use of PPE 👍 So many makers set bad examples.

There are many layers to the techniques in your second method for getting a mirror finish. When done right it'll reflect like a mirror. A big contributor is the black paint that's used. It has to be very thin otherwise you'll end up with a bumpy surface. Proper sanding and polishing before is also important, and you can use automotive polishing compound to get that mirror finish after sanding. It's not that important if you're electroplating, but for many of us being able to have metal like finishes with paint alone is definitely achievable through paint with some practice.

Have you considered trying Electroforming? Basically the same as Electroplating except you plate onto a silicone mold that has conductive paint applied and are left with a copper shell that you can electroplate onto. It's yet another step and requires a bit more copper but I think its kind of neat to be left with an entirely metal part in the end.

For the low effort method, you could add a step of using self-leveling primer. Not sure it will be enough to fill very rough layer-lines, but it should give a better result with not much more effort.

Final electroplate result looks absolutely amazing. Even the airbrush resin one looks great. Can't wait to start soon, perhaps I'll get myself an electroplating kit for Christmas!

You can make an magnetron sputterer from a jar and a vacum pump. You can plate almost everything with that

ELECTRO POLISHING - and one thing, though. Resin prints can be polished to a mirror finish as-is. They'll look like a piece of acrylic then. Would be interesting to see the second method on such parts.

You’re a life saver when it comes to tutorials, from helmets to weapons, to small props. I’m currently making a Batman costume for Halloween and electroplating, couldn’t have done it without you!

For painting with either aerosol or airbrush, your base coat matters a lot. Rather than black, a brown or dark red may help (I've even seen some that use a pink basecoat). Alternately, try a test piece, and add brown or a dark red to darken the colour a bit and make it warmer.

It's fun to think that those badges are small enough to fit the entire pcb of an earpod clone including the tiny microphone chip. So all that would have to be done would be linking touching the badge with the pcb's touch component to trigger a voice assistant.

Looks great. You should try high gloss spray paint then graphite powder and the finish with clear yellow paint. That's what I used for my Mandalorian. Super mirror reflective without the electroplating.

Such an impressive process. I love the look and the sound of electroplating!

very impressed with how good these came out, especially the fdm ones! I've seen one or two people use a similar process to intentionally rust parts to give them a weathered metal look but there seems to be very little info on it out there. I'd love a demo showing the best ways of doing this!

Thank you for all you do for hobbyists. I’m building a garage studio and you are the most informative source I’ve found!

gold plated PLA, my mind is blown :: thanks for this awesome video!

Awesome video. As always. If I ever get out of apartment living I will try this method out. For now. I can just enjoy this these master classes. Thank you!

One of the best finishing videos out there thanks!

wow, the last one looks amazing

Thanks for explaining the grits that you use when sanding each layer of filler, primer, etc. I had to find out a method that worked for me through lots of trial and error, but it would be nice to get a more in-depth video explaining your process to get glass-smooth prints (including names of each product used at each stage, grits used at each stage, buffing compounds & their grits, etc... whether you sand with 1000+ grit between paint layers, etc, etc). For example, this is my process (which may be overkill... or their may be better ways to do it... which is why I think sharing your way could be helpful too): _My process (quite light sanding pressure, so you dont scratch things too much):_ 1) 220 grit sanding to take off any zits / sharp edges and knock layer lines down a tiny bit 2) Single coat of Primer spray paint 3) A couple coats of Motip Spray Putty to fill the layer lines. 4) 400 grit sandpaper to smooth it out. If you can still see / feel layer lines with your nail, then go back to step 3. 5) Spray with Filler Primer, then sand smoother with 600 grit 6) Spray with Primer, then sand with 800 grit 7) Spray base color coat, sand with 1000-1500 grit between coats (dont sand last color coat) 8) Spray a few coats of clearcoat 9) Switch to buffing/polishing wheel (sponge pads on my drill)... using buffing compounds 1000, then 2500, then 3800 This will get you a smooth mirror-like surface... like the surface of a show sports car... but you can stop at lower grits of sanding and ignore the buffing compound with buffing wheels/pads if you dont want that level of insane smoothness / shine. Most times, you can stop at 400 grit and not need to go higher because you wont need that smooth a surface.... but any higher grits than 400 will generally need to be wet-sanded to avoid clogging of sandpaper.

These videos are great. Thank you for the great content you're providing!

This is a good candidate for solvent smoothing.

8:20 the electroplated looks so good I feel like I just learned a secret hack to make anything look perfectly chrome or gold

Those are impressive results!

when painting with metalic paints both spray and air brushing, put a black gloss base layer, let it dry for at least 24h and than the metalic paints, youll get amazing results.

Fantastic results. I've had some fun experimenting with copper sulphate but no serious project yet. I have discovered that dropping rusty nuts and bolts in solution and leaving for a few hour gets underneath the corrosion and basically removes if. The very slight copper layer is then easily removed using a wire brush. A little of topic I know. Thanks for the great video.

Ironically, the first resin print was probably the most accurate as the screen used badges were dull to avoid reflections.

they even sound metalic!!!!

I just found your channel, it's WONDERFUL stuff!! and nice subliminal text on electropolishing! 🙂

The airbrush ones looked really good

Another great video! I look forward to every one!

Your com badges are beautiful . Two lesser known things about them: on the show, they're painted with a rattle an and they're not gold, they're painted brass Nevertheless, excellent work!

On fdm, I would print the center peace as a flat part on a smooth glass bed and bent it with the help of some heat to the main peace.

Beautiful print and plate

The middle and best are amazing, for cosplay the middle one is very acceptable. Thank you for a very interesting video

My jaw is on the floor dude. 😲 Very nice

Very cool!

This is simply amazing!

3:22 for gold metallic paint it tends to look better over a red base coat instead of black. Although my experience and where I lernean it from is for miniature painting so might not apply the same to large models

_bites into it._ Gold!

Your face and body protection is better than 99% of KZfaqrs!

That was just cool. I've never gotten into electroplating for stuff like this. Only with nickle for electronic stuff. This is so amazing!

Super Überblick zu den Methoden. Echt tolle Ergebnisse!! Danke für die Sicherheitshinweise.

I use method 2 with a Red or ocre base to get a richer gold color

This is purely amazing 😍

I love your the electroplating process, especially as former jeweler who learned to do this in school for plating metals and did it a lot on the market. After seing your result with 3D printed props, I am now scared of scammers comming in with a new twist on the fake gold jewelry trick.

That's amazing!

Das ist so cool!! 😮😮😮 Sehr beeindruckend!!

yeah allclad paints! My father and I use them in our model paint jobs.

Amazing!

Vielen Dank für Ihre Video! Sie haben den besten Inhalt.

c'est trés jolie j"aime beaucoup! Viva Star Trek

That's beautiful. Now how do you fit the communications electronics inside?

My go-to gold paints are gaiacolor 132 pearl gold, and 122 Starbright gold

The electroplated materials look fantastic. How difficult is it to avoid and/or remove the fine surface scratches on those samples?

Haha dein Versprecher sehr sympathisch ich kann nicht einmal 2 Prozent so cool Englisch sprechen aber verstehen klappt super bei dir sehr klare Aussprache 👍👌danke dafür und für die guten Infos

Awesome video

what i have come to use for sanding resign and FFF prints is abrasive mesh (in german Schleifgitter). They dont leave sand/graind behind and are easy to work with while submerged in water. what is also stronglish recommend in oder to avoid aerosol particals.

A fun fact: that metallic-gold color you see on trophies isn't a paint, it's a metal dip! If you want a brassy yellow-gold color, the best spraypaint I've used is Rustoleum Metallic Gold. This is a great video, very simply explained but still a visual treat! Looking forward to watching your other videos 😊

Great video. While I love the electroplated result, the airbrush seems to work really well too.

Super video👍

With airbrushing, I would try different basecoats to get more of a silver/gold color - use white/yellow underneath instead of black, or spray everything silver and put gold on top of the silver

excellent video describing the different methods to get metallic finishes I saw you posted the link for the comb badge itself, do you have one for the little stand you used to display them?

Hi, thanks for the new e-plating video. With what did you have the better experience on e-plating 3D prints? Copper or grafite base and why? I think about to base coating my 3D-prints via airbrush and wanna buy something quite soon :) Hallo und danke für das neue E-Beschichtungs-Video. Mit was hattest du bisher die besten Erfahrungen beim Beschichten von 3D-Drucken? Kupfer oder Grafit-Grundierung und warum? Ich denke über die Grundierung meiner 3D-Drucke per Airbrush nach und möchte zeitnah etwas anschaffen :)

That's great and all....but what machine and setup do you have? Thanks

There was an old trick on KZfaq where you would zinc plate then copper plate a quarter and use a torch to melt the metals to form brass. It looked awesome and will be basically corrosion resistant without being expensive like gold. But since idk if that would be too much heat for 3d printed parts, I would love to see it tested!!

Awesome video! You are the master of electrating 3d printed parts. ;-) BTW ... usually best smooth results should be achieved using wet sand paper (ger: Nass-Schleifpapier). Wet sand paper is used before car is getting painted. You should change from dry to wet sand paper. The result will be so much better.

FDM + Acetone fumes seems like it could fit between low and medium effort

and then someone comes along and produces awesome results using nail polish^^

Have you tried vibratory finishing the parts using corn cob media after plating? I use a brass tumbler for plated metal on pinball machines. I don't have to polish this way. Very good results from this method. After tumbling just clean and add your nickel or gold segment.

If you print something with a flat top (like this) and you enable ironing. You can get near-mirror results from metallic spray cans.

Absolutely amazing results with the electroplating, your videos have inspired me to try electroplating my resin prints, Ive started the pokeball😊 would be brilliant if you could do a more in depth tutorial on the electroplating itself, there seems to be loads of contrary advice on the interweb😮

I love this channel

8:06 i wasn't aware, thank you

Boah, great video!

Tolles Video! Des Endergebnis sieht echt spitze aus! 😁👍👏👏👏 Hätte es toll gefunden wenn du noch ein paar links zu den verwendeten Chemikalien in der Beschreibung gehabt hättest. Will mich auch mal am galvanisieren versuchen.

Super geworden!

Top ! Danke

Endlich jemand der weiß das Resin Krebserregend ist und deswegen Maske/Handschuhe nutzt 🎉

Good Video, thank u!👌 Why don't you use wet sandpaper? The surfaces become much smoother Have you ever tried Molotow's Liquid Chrome? In my opinion, the best "chrome paint", but requires a lot of prework.

Do you have a video on how to make the rotary jig? I'm having trouble getting the aligator clip to not rotate with my rotary set up. Thanks in advance, your videos are awesome

These look incredible! Do you make your own plating solutions for the copper or use store bought?

Great. But from where to get the conductive copper paint???

Wow!

Hi! Great video as always! What do you search for to get the copper wire - no hardware stores sell it near me :(

7:12 You can polish conductive paint? I wonder if I can do that with plug and play kit I got?

Can you show how u made the rotary jig please? Wanna do a helmet but need that to do it

it depends what part of the costume I would like to make the armor and premeditatedly allocate the main salaries from fdm waste

Very good video! My usual process matches nicely to your medium effort, but I am tempted to replicate your high effort version and why not on exactly the same model!

Logical.