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Your total metal component manufacturing solution
We use it to create important everyday parts and components, as well as delicate and intricate jewellery designs. Silver can be found in everything from cutlery, mirrors and cufflinks through to parts for clocks, electronic equipment and appliances, circuit boards, batteries and vehicles – and much more besides; you are likely to come across photo etched silver on a daily basis.
The process of photo etching silver is just as flexible and accurate as other metal materials. However, because of how silver reacts with chemicals, we use a different chemical etchant – Ferric Nitrate – to ensure we produce the same high manufacturing standards at all times.
Other than the difference in chemistry used the etching process itself is exactly the same for silver parts as when acid etching other metals.
Alongside the highly accurate and cost-effective photo etching service, silver can also be used to plate and finish parts that have been manufactured using other materials.
Whatever your needs, our highly experienced team are on hand to help. Simply give our team a call today on 01354 658787 for more information.
Our assembly line approach reduces manufacturing time and allows us to save time by cutting unnecessary steps out of the manufacturing process.
We have a dedicated team of fully qualified professionals who are on hand to deal with and complete assembly work requests from our customers.
We offer assembly, soldering and spot welding, bespoke packaging, and also many other specialist bespoke customer requirements that our clients may have.
The photo etching process produces metal components that are both stress-free and burr-free compared to more traditional manufacturing methods – ensuring that your end product is as both accurate and precise to your drawings.
Qualitetch offer a huge range of metals for etching including: Stainless Steels, Carbon Spring Steels, Copper, Brass, Nickel Silver, Mild steel, Phosphor Bronze, Silver, Beryllium Copper, Aluminium, Nickel, Mu Metal, Alloy 42, Alloy 52 & Many Others.
In order to ensure perfect parts every time, we need to clean the sheet metal to remove any impurities from the sheets surface before manufacturing your designs. This involves passing the metal sheets slowly through acid or alkaline solutions and rinsed prior to laminating, printing and developing.
Metal cleaning involves passing the sheets slowly through conveyorised acid or alkaline solutions and rinsed clean prior to the lamination, printing and developing stages, depending on the sheet metal choice required.
Once cleaned the metal sheets are coated with a UV sensitive photo resist, which melts to sheet in preparation for the printing process.
The printing process involves us taking your chosen profile design and applying it to a two sided top and bottom acetate photo film mask, that we then print your design onto the UV sensitive photo resist.
Once the metal sheet is printed with your chosen design, we then need to develop the sheet. This process effectively washes away the fine lines of the profile we are cutting, leaving raw metal track lines ready for the etching process to work it's magic very precisely.
The etching process itself is an acid, usually ferric chloride, that effectively eats it's way through the metal at a known rate to ensure precision and targeted only in the areas you wish to remove, such as the profile track lines or other holes and features such a mesh. The rest of the sheet is masked by the UV photo sensitive blue resist, to protect the metal from the etchant until the parts are complete. This can be a very useful in a manufacturing process as the design can be very complex or include tabs or half etch fold bend lines at no added cost as you simply print your design rather than needing expensive machining time. Following an on-line dimensional check, all that is then required, is for us to strip and remove the UV photo sensitive resist coating and the parts are ready for full QA Inspection.
At Qualitetch we offer various levels of QA inspection depending on our customers needs, as we supply both major blue chip businesses all over the world as well as smaller local businesses and anywhere in-between, as the photo etching process is very versatile. We have various automated optical equipment to ensure you parts are accurately supplied to your drawings. We also offer levels of inspection including 100% inspection, PPAP levels, batch inspection, First article inspection (FAIR) and bespoke customer inspection as required.
Once the parts are fully inspected and passed they are ready to be packed and sent to the customer, or for additional processes such as plating, forming, soldering, spot-welding, machining, EDM wire erosion, heat treatment or any other bespoke services required, such as assembly.
Silver photo chemical etching can be used for both commercial components and creative arts projects. You need a trusted world class manufacturer to provide you with the very best quality etched components and that’s where we come in! At Qualitetch, we pride ourselves in only offering quality products and QA standards manufactured to your exacting drawing requirements, meaning that we are always fully committed to delivering only the best quality products and components to our customers every-time.
For more information about how our silver photo etching services can make a difference to your products, please give us a call today on 01354 658787.