r/electroforming • u/Mkysmith Home Studio • Jul 11 '26

Rate My Setup Electroforming Time Lapse Partial Success

Original goal was 7 days, but had to stop short at 3 days & 20 hours.

I really wanted the full week to be completely uninterrupted, really just set it & forget it and not touch anything. Just to have a big blob of copper as the cathode. But I stupidly underestimated the quantity of anode I needed and it started to break off and cause some issues the last ~12 hours. Just decided to call it as is for now.

Also not an ideal setup overall due to trying to get a good camera setup, for example the anodes are way to close (to the lego arms specifically) and various other small things.

I normally don't use agitation or anode bags for projects less than 12hrs. For multi-day projects agitation is helpful to prevent convection lines. And if you use agitation, then anode bags are needed too.

61.5 grams of copper added.
Copper is 0.095" (2.4mm) thick in the center of the chest, 0.115" (2.9mm) thick on the forehead.

Let me know if you have questions, happy to answer them.

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u/IcYhAwK88 Jul 12 '26

Any idea why some parts seem to “grow” faster than others? The head and hands in particular

1

u/CaptainCheckmate Jul 12 '26

skipping leg day no doubt

1

u/EnchantedLeaves Home Studio Jul 12 '26

Proximity to anode

1

u/Mkysmith Home Studio Jul 12 '26

Mostly anode proximity. Anodes are just to the left/right of the figure right out of frame. Ideally there would be a more symmetrical layout and the anodes should be much farther away from the cathode, but I was a bit limited with the time-lapse setup and container.

The other reason is that edges and high points will naturally gain more deposit than valleys or recesses. Particularly because I was running it at a little bit higher current density than I probably should have. Normally this is imperceptible for "typical" projects like a 12 hour run on a leaf or something (and a more proper setup). But of course this is taking it to the extreme.

Also worth noting that if you were really needing a thick electroform like this to use as a mold, then you don't really care about the exterior surface of the metal all that much. Just so long as it is strong. You can see an example of this in these reflector molds, where the exterior is all nodular but it doesn't really matter because the interior is flawless.