u/Elequosoraptor

Been confused about the variety of advice I've seen when it comes to plating onto common metals. Nickel turns out fine, but it seems you can't just plate zinc, aluminum, steel, iron, stainless steel, or even brass without a bunch of prepatory steps/strike layers that require their own chemistry.

Are there any common metals that you can just stick into a copper sulfate bath and electroform effectively with copper, other than nickel and copper?

Electroforming produces waste, not just solution but also contaminated gloves, wastewater from rinsing, the occasional paper towel, baking soda used to neutralize acid, etc. How do people get rid of this?

I understand the standard answer is a hazardous waste facility, but my area says they only handle household waste and won't take contaminated stuff from electroforming. What are some other options?

I have avoided updating LibreOffice because it tends to reset all my custom settings—icons, appearance, background color, etc. I cannot figure out why this happens, or how to prevent this, and would like some guidance on what setting I can use to save my details or what.

When looking this up, I find several posts in various places complaining about this—universally the answer seems to be "Libre Office does not do this". But it's definitely happened, and I didn't do anything other than open my computer, start Writer, and find it was updating. Since I don't remember how I got things to the way they were, and since I personally find the settings difficult and finicky to navigate, this is quite annoying.

Version: 26.2.5.2 (X86_64)

Build ID: cd7284b4cbbfeb507e630c1aac019f4157393acb

CPU threads: 24; OS: Windows 10 X86_64 (build 19044); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win

Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US

Calc: CL threaded

Have some of this Modge Podge Acrylic Sealer lying around—has anyone used this for electroforming? How does it hold up in a bath? It says it's "water resistant", but it's unclear if that means it's fine submerged, but can't be taken to depth, or whether it's only good for like, being in rain and can't be sumberged.

Hello all. I am new to electroforming and have an ambitious project I could use some advice on. I am planning on doing some small scale miscellaneous items first but.... I want to use electroforming to fill the natural cracks and crevices of a wooden walking stick.

The goal is layers of durable copper I can hand polish to a fine shine and seal with metal lacquer. I am looking for refinements and advice on potential challenges and hiccups I should try to mitigate.

For example, I imagine there are challenges I don't know about given the size of my project and the very long durations it'll have to be in the tank for.

I plan to make a tank out of a PVC pipe, cut vertically, capped on either end (using PVC solvent weld), and set horizontally onto some wood blocks to keep it stable.

I plan to cover my walking stick in painters tape except for the cracks I will fill with copper. Then I'll seal the exposed wood with a spray urethane, and seal everything covered in painters tape with spray urethane as well. I was also considering 'painting' the taped-off areas with cheap candle wax for extra protection, but I'm not sure if it's needed. I'm intent on the painters tape and being certain the stick is protected because the walking stick itself is unsealed wood—for artistic reasons I want the final product to have the contrast of unsealed wood connected seamlessly to copper, and the shiny plastic look of a varnish would spoil that.

Once everything is sealed, I would paint the cracks with graphite paint. Then, I plan to embed thin copper wire into the wood, running it down the length of the cracks. I want to ensure the electroformed copper adheres well, so the wire will mean thr resulting structure isn't just held in place by the deposited layer of copper on the graphite paint, but also by copper wire 'nailed' into the wood.

It will also provide an attatchment point for the copper wire that will jut out of the solution so I can attach my alligator clips to the stick without submerging them. I plan to hammer the copper thin, so that when I finish, even with the thick electroformed layer, I can just snip the extra wire off and sand/grind the surface down to a smooth finish.

I plan to do each crack one at a time. Each crack will be taped shut and sealed with wax. After completing one crack, I can unseal the next. This is to prevent the graphit paint from just soaking in the solution for days before being plated.

Since wood floats, I have used cardboard molds to make wax blocks filled with scrap metal to keep the stick submerged and prevent it from shifting.

For my anode, I intend to just use phosphorized copper tubing from the hardware store that I can place beside the crack in the tank. I imagine close proximity will be important since plating solutions don't have a high throwing power (or so I understand?). I am not sure what to use for an anode bag yet, but I imagine it'll be needed given the long duration.

I don't have a good agitation solution. I intend to just swirl things around every few hours. I do not have an active filtration setup—I don't believe it's nessecary for my goals but I'm unsure of that. I intend to use Midas plating solution. I have a benchtop power supply that I'll be setting to .1 amps/sq inch, with adjustments as I see slow growth/nodules.

When I'm done, I'll scoop out the solution, then use a baking soda water rinse to clean the stick before removing it from the tank.

I'll be doing this in my garage—lots of airflow during the day when I leave the garage door open. I'll have an old coat as a labcoat, baking soda on hand for spills, goggles and gloves.

What am I missing? What have I failed to consider? What sorts of issues can I expect to deal with? As I said, I'm new to the hobby, and besides a few small scale test pieces to get my feet wet, don't plan to gain extensive experience; I'm in it mainly for this one piece.

Hello, I'm browsing some eink monitors and am finding that the official websites often don't really clearly list certain features.

Does anyone know of 13 inch monitors that support wireless casting from your phone or have a remote control for adjusting settings?

I know the B13 has wireless casting for example, but I can't tell if Dasung's color monitors have it, or others.

I recently picked up a BigMe 13.3 inch color eink monitor. It developed some glitches, I contacted support, followed their instructions to update the firmware, and promptly rendered my monitor totally unresponsive.

It seems that since I got it from Amazon, they won't do anything. My mistake. Now I have to take a few months to save up for a new monitor, which has been pretty life changing and was, at least initially, worth the expense.

In the meanwhile, I wanted to know if anyone knows of anything that can be done to repair my borked monitor. The firmware flashing process did not go well, so I figure it's theoretically possible to fix, but maybe not practically possible. Can anything of the monitor be salvaged? Does anyone want it? Is it just pure e waste now?