Effects of Electroplating on The Mechanical Properties of St.pdf (74.49 kB)
Download fileEffects of electroplating on the mechanical properties of stereolithography and laser sintered parts
journal contribution
posted on 2008-07-31, 10:47 authored by Naguib Saleh, Neil Hopkinson, Richard J.M. Hague, Sean WiseThis paper provides a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the effects of
electroplating on polymer parts made by stereolithography and laser sintering. A
series of test samples were coated with copper and nickel with varying thickness.
Thicker coatings (120μm) were reproduced with a repeatability that should not
adversely affect the tolerances with which such parts may be produced given the
tolerances of the initial rapid prototyping processes themselves. Thinner coatings
(20μm) resulted in a smother surface finish than thicker coatings for
stereolithography parts, however the converse was true for laser-sintered parts.
Composite theory was used to predict that thicker coating would lead to higher
Young’s modulus in parts and this was shown to be true in physical tests although
the practical values were lower than the predicted values especially for thicker
coatings. Physical tests also confirmed that thicker coatings increased UTS and
impact energy but had a minimal effect on the ductility of parts.
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