One of the biggest complaints of 3D printing in the home is that it can’t do shiny metal prints, unless of course you have some super expensive metal printer. However, as Hen3drik shows us, there is a way to take a normal print from your typical resin based MSLA machine and make it look fully chromed.
The first step is to really smooth out the surface of your print. You’re not going to get that perfect smooth finish unless you put in the effort to actually first smooth out your layer lines.
After you’ve got things perfectly smooth, you have to coat the entire object in a conductive copper paint. This step alone looks pretty awesome, but it will get covered up.
After that, you can drop your item into your electroplating bath(a little more detail on this part in the video below). This part sounds daunting but after you see the process, it isn’t so bad. For this item, there was a base electroplating of copper, then a secondary of nickel to get that shiny silver you see in the pictures.
Ultimately, your surface finish is going to all depend on the time you spend sanding and polishing in between each step.
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