[Fresh Wind]

You overgeneralize the plating issue.

Some electroplating processes are fairly safe and easily doable in a home workshop. This includes nickel, copper, and brass. You can buy all the necessary ingredients on-line, with no particular interference by the EPA.

http://www.caswellplating.com/

Other processes involve chemicals that are deadly poisons (e.g. cyanide). This includes chromium and cadmium. You’d better know what you are doing if you mess around with those types of plating, and that’s what the EPA is enforcing.

As always, keeping a low profile with anything you do is to your advantage.

It becomes a whole ‘nother issue if you want to set up a business to do plating. That’s when you’ll find out what the EPA is all about.

[null and void]

Ah. My new tagline!

[roadcat]

I use kits that I bought from Caswell Plating. They work, but slowly. And the plating solutions are expensive, I think they cost from about $12 to $20 a bottle, which varies from 4 oz to 8 oz or so, depending on the metal desired. For small work a pen is used. Larger work uses a wand wrapped with a cloth. I've used these to plate door hinges, door knobs and plates, wall sconces, door knockers, etc. Also done some car parts. It takes a lot of time to properly plate an object. Sometimes you need to plate with another metal before the final metal in order to make it "stick".

I don't see how this could be easily done with a 3D printer process, I foresee many problems in trying to build a sufficient layer of metal.