Saho's Graphite Conductive Paint for Electroforming, Electroplating, 1oz

I was using a graphite paint from Rio Grande, but they don't have it anymore. After trying a couple of different brands, I really like this one. It's nice and thin and paints on smooth and takes the electroplating pretty good. My only complaint would be the container it comes in. I wish it was short and wide. The tall skinny is really hard to stick a paintbrush in and see how far you're dipping it when the mouth of the container is only half an inch. A wider, flatter container would be so much easier to paint from.

This worked really well for electroplating. Spray swell in a 0.5 MM nozzle. Make sure you mix thoroughly!!! After drying it brushes off easily with a towel or if you have intricate features using a soft bristle paint brush works as well. Also handles vibratory polishing with walnut shells very well as long as you don't run for too long of a time. I found that after three Coats of that vibratory tumbling for 30 to 45 minutes is sufficient. Anything much longer past that will eat through the paint layer down to your part. Got reading between 100 ohms to 600 ohms on part depending on distance. Very nice. Afterwards using this in electroplating worked very well I got very good plating results with minimal to no issues. Only complaint, wish it came in a larger volume with a cheaper price per ounce. An 8 ounce option at $150 to $200 would be really nice.

I wrote a review already but here’s a picture of the first test. Easy and miles better than a previous product I had tried.

I make small resin parts and after watching a few videos decided to try my hand at plating. Needless to say the videos left a lot out. After more than a few failures I contacted Saho's looking for help. They have been extremely helpful and pointed out in detail all the things I had been doing wrong. After some back and fourth (me mostly not following their emails correctly), I am starting to get decent quality plated parts! Great!

It’s okay but does not stick well at all to glass. Even with ample dry time. Easy to use just mix well wear gloves it doesn’t wash easily

I absolutely would not recommend. It ruined two of my projects because I apparently hadn’t mixed it well enough- even though I stirred according to directions- and it stopped plating halfway through leaving a thick edge. I get more consistent results with matte mod podge and charcoal powder for a fraction of the price.

This was my first experience with graphite conductive paint so I can't make a comparison to other paints on the market or DIY options that seem to be floating around in tutorials. I can, however, attest to the ease and simplicity of this one. I opted to buy a premade product rather than make my own because electroplating is already fraught with a myriad of variables and I wanted to try and eliminate some of them. This paint was thin enough to shoot through my Badger Renegade .2 nozzle at about 30psi. My method was to clean the resin part thoroughly with soap and water and then give it a rinse in pure acetone. After that, I coated it in Mr. Surfacer 1500 black as a primer, let it dry for 4 hours, and then sprayed the graphite paint and allowed it to dry overnight. In the morning, I created the copper wire cage and dunked it in the bath. I ran the bath at .15A constant current for 13 hours and manually rotated the piece 180 degrees about every 30-60 minutes. After taking it out, I rinsed the part in water and polished it with a soft bristle brush on my Dremel. I still plan to put a nickel and a then a gold layer on this but for now, the graphite layer has done it's job. Overall, this product was easy to use and provided both an adhesion layer between the resin and the copper as well as provided conductivity for the electroplating process. I did not test the conductivity sine I don't own a multimeter but I tried to overcompensate by putting on 3-4 layers of the graphite paint. It appeared to not have any issues in that area. My only "con" is the price but this little bottle will go a long way for the small parts I'll be working on and I consider it well worth the money based on its results and ease of use.

Works great! Just what I needed. Thanks!