Have you tried Fox, look under "made to measure" for bespoke etching

Mark

I would be interested in a description of the steps you took to produce that plate if you wouldn't mind.

Cheers

Phil

Phil,

Its quite simple the hardest part is painting the plate.

I bought a cheap used laser printer off ebay.In my case a Samsung ML-1860. It had half the original toner cartridge still in (worked great) and later found out that cheap compatable toner cartridges dont work very well.

I printed out the reverse image onto mylar drafting film using the best quality and blackest print settings.

I then placed it over the brass plate which was cleaned and polished before hand with alcohol or acetone and ironed the mylar on a hot setting .

Carefully and slowly peeled off the mylar before it cooled too much and it leaves the black toner as a mask on the brass plate.If all goes well it should look like this.

I then coated the back with a couple of coats of shellac,quick drying acrylic varnish will do,just to stop etching on the back of the plate.

I then prepared a simple warm bath of ferric chloride in an old icecream tub. I didnt take much notice of the strength of the solution but probably about 25gms in 1/2 litre of water.

Then just put it in the bath and gently tilted the tub occasionally to keep te solution a bit agitated.

You can use a very soft brush to brush the surface but after a while the toner becomes sensitive to abrasion.

Heres a different plate in the bath.

Thats basically it ,clean off the toner with a dish cleaner scruber (like the scotchbrite pads).

Simpler version of Mark Smith's method is to print on the paper here: **LINK** then iron on to work.

Regards,

Richard.

Maurice , i noticed this when i add more ferric chloride to the bath,it stopped the reaction.

The film that forms prevents the reaction and its a fine balance using the toner method between carefully brushing the surface with a soft brush and removing parts of the toner(which you dont want until your finished). If your not going very deep then just agitating the bath works.

I think i added some citric acid to the bath as well but cant remember, may have been something else.

Well I have now tried gargoyling motor oil, and it leaves a pretty bad taste in the mouth, and it didn't result in any etching, just retching…

Neil

"I use photo etching, bit expensive for a one-off unless you use sunlight as a UV source.

Neil"

Not necessarily so, here's a little contraption I made with aluminumm sheet, pop rivets and parts from the scrap box when I bought some photoresist PCB laminate at a fair; the vendor told me I could use a Philips TL 8 W tube (standard tube, but it seems they "leak" some UV radiation) for 90 seconds at a distance of 7 cm.

You simply put the "mask" (artwork on a printed drafting paper, best with a laser printer, but inkjet was about the same) on the pcb, a piece of glass over the two ( I quickly took it from a small display case I have, just to show that I'm a casual pcb "developer"…) and this gadget on top.

Results where consistent ( I always turned it on for a few minutes before using it on the pcb, to be sure that it had reached it's working temperature) radiation bounces on the inner walls. Working area 32×13 cm, TL tube axis height (guess…) 7 cm.

I searched now, and found that you can buy UV TL tubes, anyway I think that a standard tube is safer, as the exposition time is longer and plusminus a couple of seconds won't ruin your pcb.

Anyway experiment on small samples of the pcb laminate you have before trying "full size".

Cheers,

Massimo