Electroforming is the fabrication of a part from a sole electroplating process. A shaped mandrel is plated for a very long process time (several hours, often even days or weeks) in order to build up a "stand alone" thickness (up to several cms or inches). The mandrel is subsequently removed e.g. by melting or chemical etching. The major part of the industrial applications deal with nickel electroforming (sometimes as an alloy with chrome, tin or cobalt), but also copper and gold electroforming are commonly used processes.

Nickel electroforming applications typically involve the fabrication of moulds (e.g for lenses, dashboards), dies (e.g for steel sheet shaping), aircraft tools, sieves etc.

Electroforming is superior over competing process technologies (e.g. casting, forging, stamping, machining) due to the avoidance of burrs and residual stresses, excellent reproducibility and cost-effectiveness. In addition, electroforming allows to produce virtually any shape with very high precision. However, producing a desired shape requires very well controlled process conditions (electrolyte flow rate, DC/pulsed current) and a fine tuned anode tool configuration (relative to the object to be fabricated), possibly involving also screens and current thieves, and repositioning of these anode tools, screens and current thieves over the process time.

Optimizing both the process parameters and cell configuration can be handled in a very fast and effective way using relevant Elsyca simulation tools as Elsyca PlatingMaster and Elsy2D.