I was Jewellery designer and jeweller for over 25 years and i agree with you that is not expensive. THEY WOULD SELL IT EXPENSIVE. that was my point.
Ah. I wonder, would it be possible to disassemble an all metal hotend and get the inner tubing gold plated? Also, I think it behoove some of the makers of all metal hotends to start getting them gold plated. I say that because you say it would be a big help. I’ve never personally tested how well filament plastic sticks to gold.
It doesn’t stick as much as in other metals. You don’t have to Gold plate the inner side of the tube, but the hole tube. When Gold plate a piece of metal and especially a tube, you must know that the inner surface fail of plating.
I am beginning to see why I was having so much trouble wirh my Creality all metal hotend trying to make it extrude properly.
I used to dabble with electroplating because I made costume jewelry. When I was doing it in spai I used to get bracelets and things electo-plated for me.
Have you tried to electroplate a tube to what will happen inside it?
I’m aware some people install a capsule on their filment train that wipes a tiny bit of oil onto the filament. I’ve always wondered if that affects the laying down of filement, or layer adhesion. But I now also wonder if it would help with feeding filament through an all metal hotend.
The trick is to use barrel plating.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
In short lengths will work, but in long lengths not so much…
And i mean in custom plating only! If a manufacturer decides to produce it, then will be easy for him as well as profitable.
Barrel plating is a technique wherein a water tight barrel is lined with conductive meta hobnails around it inner side, made of the metal you want to plate. The parts to be plated are put inside the barrel, it’s sealed, and the the barrel is rotated while current is fed through the hobnails. The parts contact the hobnails, and each other, thereby get plated.
Would that properly plate the interior of the tubes?
That’s partly why it’s used. Nowadays, it may be possible to get good results by using electroless plating. That, for sure, would fully plate the inside.
…and will cost to the end user as well!
When I was learning what little I know about electro-plating they said you could gold plate one of those big old Cadillacs with an ounce of gold.
I believe it. Gold is usually plater very, very thin.
It’s like plated hotends, production is cheap but selling is expensive. Take a look at E3D’s coated hotends. It’s the same logic.
Sounds more like a cash grab, or profit maximizer, to me. IOW, if the coated hotend lasts twice as long, the manufacturer sees having to wait longer to sell the customer another hotend as a loss that they need to make up. I hate that kind of marketing BS. Much better to have loyal customers over the long term than to lose them to dissatisfaction.
Depends on what the manufacturer wants… Everything is marketing!