Cheap and Easy PCB Etching
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 เม.ย. 2019
- To the angry person who decided that y'all cant be safe without a NIST safety sheet (but is now thankfully blocked from this channel... one of only 3 people ever blocked from IKW) Don't be dumb at least with chemicals... What you do in your non chemical time is up to you. Cheers!
We've all been there with homebrew PCB etching. It's messy and a pain to get a hold of the chemicals. Today we're going to take a look at cheap and easy hardware store solution to making a copper etching solution.
BEWARE: This demonstration includes fairly toxic chemicals that can kill you if you are not careful. Please take standard safety measures when working with this stuff. ItKindaWorks is in no way responsible for any damage or harm that may come from working with these materials. You've been warned. Now back to the show! - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I've been doing a bunch of this recently. I switched to the same HCl+HO2 setup about 6 months ago.
IIRC the chemist on the channel Nurdrage mentioned this setup results in the off gassing of just hydrogen during the process. So a well ventilated space is needed. I don't use a mask, I do this on my back patio. The gloves aren't really necessary either. I don't go sticking my hand in the stuff, but it isn't terribly strong either. I usually use a popsicle stick and a paper towel. If some gets on my fingers it's no big deal. It doesn't burn right away or anything. It will dry out your skin, and if the solution is well used it will color your skin a bit yellow, but it mostly washes off with water and handsoap. It's nothing like the dying properties of ferric chloride.
Nurdrage also details how to 100% recycle HCl+HO2. It requires a hotplate stirrer and distillation apparatus. I haven't done this yet as I'm still looking for the chem kit setup for cheap. I have 2 liters of used etchant to process though.
If you get into dry film photoresist setups this etching solution can also make solder paste stencils using a coke can. You just cut a flat sheet of aluminum from the can, remove the outer paint with ~600 grit, clean with white powder dishwashing detergent (clean all boards with this too), apply resist film, expose with transparency, and etch. The can material is the perfect thickness. The trick is to size the transparency mask pads around 80%. I can make a stencil with a TSSOP package with 0.4mm pitch first try most of the time. I just wish I could get my solder mask resolution this good...but I'm still working on that.
If you ever try photoresist, don't remove the board and put it back in like you did here. For some reason it will react with the atmosphere. I tried to touch up a large board mid-etch with a marker on my last run. A small spot of photoresist failed early due to a tiny trapped air bubble. I had it out for less than a minute just to dab a bit of marker on the spot. I put it back in and you'd think the etching solution had magically turned into acetone. The photoresist completely de-laminated and ruined the board.
If Bill (abcFab/eBay) ever comes back from his long vacation I want to try to make a 4 layer board at home using his ultra thin single sided and double core boards. That's next on my bucket list.
Etching is fun :-)
-Jake
A much safer and easier option is sodium persulphate. Its a chemical compound of sodium sulphate and hydrogen peroxide and it comes as a white powder so totally safe to store. Also, it makes a really nice, mild etchant with no undercuts. Oh yeah, and no chlorine! Also, it is clear, totally transparent to begin with, so you can easily see what’s going on. The solution can be reused many times, and it gets a nice blue tint to it as it absorbs copper.
Yay! Welcome back.
Do what you like, what makes you full of energy. It's more fun to watch such a video, plus odds are that I have not seen a video on the same subject last week.
Good video, but what's missing at the end is how to properly/responsibly neutralize and dispose of the used solution. Practically all the blogs and videos describing alternatives to ferric chloride mention very little about what to do with the chemical after etching.
Hot tip: KEEP IT!
This etcher over time will convert copper into cupric chloride which will end up doing the etching work and is renewable by adding small amounts of peroxide over time, and small mounts of acid very occasionally if it all gets used up. The oxygen reactivates the cupric chloride (if it's green, it's good to go, brown means add a little peroxide, and if that doesn't make it green, add a little more acid) and you can use this etching solution over and over. The disposal for this stuff is more about not getting copper salts into the ground water. That would be bad. All the more reason to keep the copper and use it as your etcher!
Good decision, do what you enjoy, not what's trending. Much more enjoyable to viewers ;)
Better to use outside. The fumes will etch metal where ever the fumes reach. All metal in my garage has been blemished by fumes from the concrete cleaner.
Can i use 32% Hydrochloric Acid instead? can't find muriatic acid, googling it says the difference is Muriatic acid is less pure so if that'll make a difference idk
How did you paint the circuit on pcb
From what i have heard, this solution gets better the more use it. Eventually, the green colour will turn brown, but that is just because it has lost the oxygen content, you can fix that by shaking it in a sealed container, or adding more peroxide (which is the oxidiser). Obviously, more peroxide will water down the mixture, so better to just shake or bubble air through the mixture.
I have 30% H2O2 so I guess I have to mix it with 10x water to dilute it. Right?
You can regenerate the etching solution by adding H2O2 again.
yay science and random tangents! subscribed!
I tried
Hydrogen peroxide with citric acid and salt and i got excellent results without using muriatic acid
y'know, i live in the tropics which can reach 37, so i guess i just need to wait for some sunny days then lol
Hey mate welcome back. Yeah thats how i think of youtube too. Do as much effort as you want, not what other ppl want. Even if youtube is a "job" for some as it makes them income - THEY are still their own boss so it can be as fun and satisfying for them as they make it. Theres no reason to do it otherwise 😊. If its not going well - ask your boss (ie: ask yourself) for a more enjoyable & satisfying work environment haha, lets see how happy we can make this employee!
This sortof treating yourself as an employee & a good boss, or patient and a good doctor, also works well for taking care of your own health. ie: "Doctors orders" (actually just me) say reduce my stress, so welp i gotta do it. I guess its a way of tricking your mind into seeing its own good advice as comming from an "authority figure" so u are more likely to not ignore it.
Hah, i guess rambling is catching on 😛
Yes safe hand gloves
best viedeo bro
You do you! Make videos that you like to do and it will come across to us.
I etch my PCB's all the time with HCl and Hydrogen peroxide, just couple of times used ferric chloride, but tihis is nasty stuff. Way faster and better is with HCl and H2O2. My way etching is first i put pcb in plastic dish, pour HCl onto board, and drip H2O2 on board, more H2O2 you add , faster etching is.
why do you need to add h2o2
@@aeropeoplellc8160 oxidizer
You can make your own Hydrochloric acid (Muriatic acid). Just mix equal proportions of sodium hydrogen sulphate(PH Minus), and sodium chloride(salt) together in a bottle. Heat on high and bubble the gasses into distilled water to get 35%(concentrated) HCL. I've done this many times before and it works very well.
What's the cost savings? Is it really worth the additional risk?
Fairly significant IMO. In the past I'd go through a couple liters of ferric chloride per year and looking at the price of the bottles I would get on amazon it would end up being between $50-75 for all of that. I've had the acid for over a year now and the H2O2 I've only had to refill a handful of times so maybe $15 in all. Plus it's really not as dangerous as it seems, I just have to make sure people take it seriously because it *could* be dangerous if not handled properly. Also I have to order ferric chloride online so another benefit is the ease of finding it. And to top it off, this stuff just turns bright green rather than a dark brown which makes it much easier to see the etching progress. So for me at least, it has huge benefits.
i used the widshield washer pump from my vehicle to etch the board
Nice!
if you use 35% H2O2 you dont need to heat the solution and you dont even need to scrape the copper, you just need to stir it with shaking the container... i'v done this on -15 Celsius without a problem...
You certainly dont need to scrape at it with a q-tip or use a heater but those both speed up the process a bit plus with my laser method of etching the mask, sometimes small bits of the mask arent totally vaporized so the qtip helps wash it away. I also dont know if ive ever seen 35% H2O2 in a drug or hardware store. I'm not saying it doesn't exist but 3% is much easier to find outside of specialty stores. Also -15C? Why are you torturing yourself my man!
@@ItKindaWorks last PCB i was etching was this winter and i dont want to breathe the "vapors" produced so i do it outside... i get my 35% H2O2 from stores that color clothes, its $6.45USD per liter (i think you can get some from drug store if you ask them they will sell you)... i am from Macedonia tho... i etch the PCB's in not more than 10-20 seconds this way... if you heat the solution while using 35% H2O2 there is no marker or any other layer that you can apply that will survive the etching :) i hope i will make a video from my process soon...
@@Hobypyrocom can 32% work??
@@rmdhn1 any percentage of H2O2 will work since the hydrogen peroxide is only a catalyst of the reaction. you can even use 2% H2O2 but you will need to add way more than if you use 32%, which will also dilute the acid you are using, which will result in slower etching and with that there is more probability that the mask will be damaged...
just have this in mind, imagine looking at a vertical cross section of the PCB under microscope, if the etching is fast you will get more precise vertical walls of the copper traces, the slower the etching is the more "undercut" under the mask you will have and with that if you have really thin traces, they will become even thinner...
be warned, using high percentage of HCL and high percentage of H2O2, when they are mixed they produce heat and also Cl gas, so do this outside...
You also can't store it as the hydrogen peroxide has copper in it and it will continue to decompose as I have experienced the hard way in my bedroom and mine was 30% H2O2 and citric acid crystals. No heating required.
I am using nothing but HCl + H2O2 for etching whole my live :-) I was thought not to use anything but original bottles for storing dangerous materials/fluids !
Baking soda neutralizes acid, keep a box on hand.
How do you safely dispose the used solution?
Neutralize it using a base such as baking soda
You keep it, because you just made cupric chloride which will be your etcher, keep it nice and green with some peroxide when it goes brown, add a little more acid if it won't turn green. Done, you just made yourself a self regenerating etcher that you don't want to throw away at all!
The respirator comes for free, while ingredients for solution is $9, yep.
Want to know what I use? peroxide, regular heinz or whatever brand house vinegar and a teaspoon of salt you should try that!
I have to use this method too. In my case it's because I can't easily source other enchants. It's slow, but it gets the job done.
What process did you use to stop the etching process on the board.
11:38 he put it into water
Another method is to use a baking soda water mixture (to prevent under etching) and then a pure water bath or rinsing
I still prefer Sodium Perchlorate, at the end it's easier to dispose by adding Iron to get the copper out.
Make a tutorial on how to make crystal meth
Vinegar and Hydrogen peroxide works as well.
Yeah but the vinegar is for cooking. that and foot baths. If its also used for making PCBs then we'll never be able to keep track of it
Does it also produce toxic fumes?
@@GospodinJean not that I remember it will turn although green and works best when it is hot
@@kf6czh thanks for the reply
Please put the cap back on the coke bottle.
YES! I saw that while editing and went down to re-cap it haha.
Let me use the lemon as a source of acid ot is more cheap😅
Wrong acid, you need hydrochloric to get the chlorine gas in solution needed for the chemistry to work.