Photo etching, which is also known as chemi etching, chemical etching or photo chemical milling (PCM) is a manufacturing process which uses ferric chloride or ferric nitrate as an etching chemistry to produce intricate and highly precise precision metal components. through acid etching. Metal etching offers a very fast turnaround alternate solution to other processes such as stamping, punching, water jet or laser cutting particularly for very fine feature complex metal components from 0.0127mm – 1.60mm thick in most metal types.
How does the process work?
The metal is cut, cleaned and then laminated with a blue UV photo-sensitive resist applied. The resist is then printed using an acetate photo-film of your desired CAD artwork design profile which is used to manufacture for metal component.
After printing your design, the metal is then developed through a horizontal conveyorized chamber, which effectively washes away any unexposed photo-resist from the print process, leaving a raw metal profile track line for the ferric chloride chemistry acid etchant to pierce and etch through the metal.
After etching out the profile design, we simply remove the blue UV photo-sensitive resist through a stripping chemistry to leave the raw metal parts either loose or tabbed into the larger fretwork sheet. We can then supply your metal components cropped from the sheet and supplied loose or left in the sheet for protection for customers to remove if desired.
You can see this process in video by clicking the link here to see the complete photo etching process from start to finish https://youtu.be/xZANSwZ8cI0
Metal Etching Benefits include:
Photo etching is a completely burr free and stress-free process with no mechanical force or heat being applied to the metal parts during production, making this an ideal process for metal components such as fragile meshes or fretwork as no force in used in the manufacturing process.
Artwork is ideally required in CAD format and then transferred to an acetate photo-tool, therefore any design changes are very simple amend and very fast implement and cost effective. We offer FREE photo-tool artwork at Qualitetch, once you supply a DXF format artwork of your required profile, but many of our competitors charge up to £100+ for this service. Here at Qualitetch we like to invest in our customers therefore we do not charge for this artwork service unless particularly unusual.
The photo etching process does not recognise the complexity of your design, therefore components with many holes such as meshes can be manufactured at no additional cost than a simple shape profile, which makes chemical etching highly desirable against other advanced manufacturing methods.
Tolerances offered from +-0.025mm dependent on material type and thickness.
FAST lead-times with parts available within a few days.
What metals do we work with?
Stainless steels and spring & mild steels
Nickel and nickel alloys
Aluminium
Copper and copper alloys
Molybdenum
If we can assist with your next metal component project then please contact our sales team today on 01354 658787 sales@qualitetch.com or www.qualitetch.com for more info.
