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Nickel Silver Etching

Nickel Silver is an extremely useful metal due to its high resistance to heat and corrosion

This makes Nickel Silver a popular choice when developing a variety of components particularly RFI, EMC & EMI screening cans and shields for PCB's . At Qualitetch, we are able to offer both Nickel or Nickel Silver for any applications you require.
Even the most intricate of designs are possible with our cost-efficient and eminently accurate Photo Chemical Etching process. The material when finished profile cutting via etching will be burr and stress-free, and retaining all of its essential properties.

Following the finalisation of your design, we first clean the raw material nickel silver sheet and then the coat the sheet with a UV sensitive photo-resist, before then printing your required profile directly onto the UV photo resist covered sheet. After this, the material is then passed through a sprayed chemical bath solution of ferric chloride, which is used as our etchant to cut your profile design.

Our chemical etching process works equally well for both soft annealed, half hard or fully hard metals, which effectively, we then acid etch a thin track line to an exacting standard to ensure your components are manufactured to your drawing design.

Any trace of photo-resist are then removed once the process has been finished. The parts are then approved by our team of QA and compliance technicians.

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Benefits of Nickel Silver Etching

High Resistance

Due to the strength and resistance of Nickel Silver, the metal is used in a variety of industries, most commonly for shielding can applications.

Dedicated Team

We have a dedicated team of fully qualified professionals who are on hand to deal with and complete assembly work requests from our customers.

Bespoke Packaging

As well as offering additional services such as assembly work, soldering & spot-welding we also offer bespoke packaging if required by our customers, this can include either jigging or bespoke thermo-formed trays and lids.

Photo Etching Process

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.

1
Metal Selection

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.

2
Metal Cleaning Process

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.

3
Metal Cleaning

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.

4
Preparation - Lamination

Once cleaned the metal sheets are coated with a UV sensitive photo resist, which melts to sheet in preparation for the printing process.

5
Preparation - Printing

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.

6
Preparation - Developing

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.

7
Photo Chemical Etching

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.

8
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.

9
Final Product

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.

Trusted manufacturer

As the process of chemically etching Nickel Silver needs to be completed correctly to manufacture quality finished components without staining or etch faults, you need to ensure you use a trusted manufacturer to provide the best possible quality within the marketplace That’s where we come in. At Qualitetch, we pride ourselves in our world class manufacturing solutions and customer service to deliver your metal component requirements flat or formed.

For more information about how our nickel etching services can make a difference to your products, please give us a call today on 01354 658787.

Ready to discuss your component design project?

Please fill out our enquiry request form for more information about how our photo etching services can make the difference to your project.

sales@qualitetch.com +44 (0)1354 658787

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