Ultralight Metallic Microlattices

CONSIDER SUBSCRIBING 🥰 ☕Buy me a coffee? 🔬Or Patreon if that’s your jam: 📢Twitter: 💻Discord: A team of researchers created ultralight metallic microlattices back in 2011... and I tried to replicate their result using commercially available, off-the-shelf materials. The authors used a special self-propagating photocurable resin, electroless nickel plating and a special solution to dissolve the resin. I have a cheap resin printer and some DIY copper/nickel electroplating baths. In this video we see if we can recreate their result, and work through the challenges of COTS materials. I started with resin prints copper/nickel plating, but due to gas pressure during thermal decomposition of the resin, eventually switched to PLA FDM printing. Less beautiful lattices, but more encouraging results :)