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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- Experimenting with etching your own PCB's by concentrating existing ferric chloride levels in tap water. How well does it work?
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eev...
#DIY #PCB #Etching
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As a chemist I have my doubts about the amount of ferric chloride you had managed to "concentrate" in your glass. I bet you could repeat this experiment with regular tap water, or hell, even distilled water, and you would get very similar results.
The reaction you are doing is actually between the water, the copper and *oxygen* from the air. The oxygen oxidizes the copper and the copper ions are dissolved in the water in the form of an aqua-complex (light blue color). This is a very slow reaction at room temperature, happening only over days/weeks/months. The process will lower the pH, and without any acid present the solution very quickly saturates, so I would expect this "etchant" has a very low copper carrying capacity.
I would really like to see you try straight tap water, tap water that has been boiled (to drive off free chlorine), distilled water, and "concentrated" tap water.
BTW you could also try vinegar (in a separate batch, otherwise it might contaminate the other samples slightly), I would expect that it would etch way faster than any of the water samples.
What about clear peroxide? Warming it would give it enough oxygen
But we all know that magnets can make your car engine more efficient by lining up the molecules, so this must be true. Must make sure I go round the house and ensure I have no magnets near my hot water pipes - I wouldn't want them to dissolve like that.
Sounds like a thing for Dave's assistant Ben Heck to check out and investigate further!
Also, Ferric Chloride (FeCl3) is non-magnetic.
@UCefghd9-ytBzkdR-g8RnebA Ahh crap... Got me!
In Australia, even tap water tries to eat your face away.
You havent tasted poison until you drank tap water from argentina
@@muaries12 Testified. The water in Córdoba is disgusting.
You’re really trying to see the good in the water after your lab flooding 😉
My first wife, April, said you need ultra violet light, especially at the same resonant frequency of the iron molecules.
If she were French, would she have liked fish at this time of year?
Peter Lund what???
Ah... Some women can make you look like a fool all day long...
Talking about your ex-wife? I bet she got you wrapped around her finger. Why did you have to let it linger, dude? You know you are such a fool for her.
Never trust your first wife.
This is not new, it was developed by, Australian Product Realisation Industry Limited, Foundation Of Original Lithography. The process was called Bipolar Unobtanium Linked Lithography Superimposing Harmonic Interference Transmission.
Shhh.. that's the secret sauce for time travel machine. Don't tell them about that other thing now
I even etched a 4 layer pcb with this method, the slow process helps in etching the inner layers without being too aggressive on the outer layers. Great video.
Only 4 layer ? I etch my pc motherboard prototypes in tap water all the time .
Was it audio gear? I heard slow etching improves velocity and presence.
yeah, i used to have this problem alot, the outer layers get eched away too much because too high concentration, but this is easily fixable by using a 5 layer pcb, the 5th layer contains the outher layer stuff, and the outher layer is just a huge exposed copper area, to tame the etching process. Also you can do the electroplating in the same solution if you add cinnamon and a 1.5v watch battery to it.
You should kickstarter this.
It would be a success!
No, remember IndieGoGo is for the scams, you got the wrong one!
I hear you can also find $40k oscilloscopes in dumpsters.
Open a type 1 ferric oxide cassette tape. Drop the spools of tape in a jar of table salt. Doing this destroys the tape and makes the salt taste horrible. Also the residue is useless for etching pcb's.
You're the best
You can also put the tape over your PCB and turn the cassette with a motor, to make the tape run over the surface. This will also destroy the tape.
some people just want to watch the world burn
you can also discharge capacitors through it or apply very high voltages across it. this will destroy your tape. and recycle it into illumination and magic smoke.
Seriously now, could you make a lukewarm heating element out of it?
Thanks Dave!! I will try this out here in Europe... I have the feeling it works out just fine exactly TOMORROW
what the fuck is Europe?
@@6Diego1Diego9 you must be a fairly sophisticated chap
Yes and about 5 hours for me eastern time zone. 😉
@@6Diego1Diego9 Europe's not a country! Whoops.
@@6Diego1Diego9 Never heard of the united states of europe? Watch this: th-cam.com/video/afaQ4GSNZMg/w-d-xo.html
Nice try. Like always. Thanks Dave!
Guys. Remember. In Australia it’s April 1st earlier than anywhere else.
Actually the pacific islands just beat us; but maybe they don't have a large PCB production industry...
Homeopathic PCB etchant
Actually if it would be homeopathic he would remove ferric cloride from the water so it would get even more diluted.
If you diluted it more it would be stronger solution.
Stupid idiotic homeomorons.
Jonas Lecerof Haha! I was thinking the same. Can we coin the term Reverse-homeopathy?
@@toddberg3892 Sure. Also known as the "normal approach".
Homeopathy's alright :-P
I am not interested in etching a PCB, but using the same strategy, I found that there is trace amounts of whiskey in drinking water. Since alcohol is lighter than water, I took a gallon jug and filled it with tap water and let it sit for several hours. At the end, there was a slight, but discernible, slick of amber liquid on the top of the water. I drew it off and repeated this 10 times with 10 different fills of water. In the end, I got about 1/2 ounce of whiskey. I did a taste test with my Jameson's Irish and, was pleased to find it was similar. Since more people drink scotch, I think my free whiskey is probably more Johnny Walker than Jamesons.
Great tip, thanks!
Hi Dave, distilling the water and using the remaining water means no waste and a higher concentration. It's how I make all my pcbs and beverages :)
I am sure you could use 555 at right frequency to speed it up :) you had me until the magnets, dave is the best...Good day to you all...
Same. He had me going until he pulled out the magnets. That's when I knew he was also pulling our legs.
Nah-you need a 666 to do anything in this situation....
It's the magnets that triggered me to check the timestamp of the video, and sure enough... Evil Dave! :P :D
This is a well-known etching method in the literature. It was first described in the 1970s, when the legal limits were much higher, by the Italian chemistry researcher Aprilio Primera. Actually, today's water treatment still have a difficulty keeping the levels below the legal limits, with most Marching toward 31 ppm of Fe+ irons.
Gameboygenius Nice 👍
Great find! ;-)
I bet he was born on 1 April, hence the nice name he was given.
@@michaels3003 actually, he was born on March 32nd.
Here we go again. You are lucky to have this thing with being ahead of everyone else time-wise! 🙂
Very inventive as always!👍
Yay! Q2 prime blog entry! I wait for this every year Dave. Well done.
Simply brilliant. It was nearly 5 minutes before I twigged.
That's genius. No more playing around with chemicals. Just boil a lot of water to concentrate the ferric chloride and etch some PCBs! Can't wait to start doing this.
Best one so far. Looking forward to the follow-up.
That magnet trick - it was really helpful! Spring is upon us, I can etch my PCBs in sun now!
I started a try right away, it worked good. I even managed to get a better concentration for the water: I put a lot of very strong magnets in the bottom of my bath tub and let the water run for 5 hours with a hose to the bottom of the tub. I was able to etch a board in 15min with that water from the bottom of the tub.
Thanks Dave for that idea. 😁
AMAZING! It works! We must have very high concentration of ferric chloride in the water here in Copenhagen. It only took about 4.01 minutes at room temperature (without magnets).
Great day for experiments like this.
At first I was skeptical, but when I saw the magnet method I realized just how accurate this is.
I didn't realise that Aussies had a sense of humour - nice one Dave - especially the magnetic under the glass
Now I’m VERY curious to see you do this with just a quick fill up from that tap. This is nutty!
It's awesome! With this slow etching i was able to etch a 4-layer board no problem. It took more than an hour and a bit more than a bucket of water though.
Nice one there, you definitively got me.
Dear Sir,
After numerous experiments with diferent concentration techniques I was not able to re-produce your experiment.
On the other hand, I found an other way to use plain tap water wihout any special magnetic treatment to etch copper wit great results with: just a good amount of ferric chloride has to be added.
Dave, I've tried it here in the Netherlands but it doesn't seem to work. Afterwards I failed to test it by turning the magnet around, because it might be due to the fact that you're on the negative half of the hemisphere.
I'm also looking into the possibility that I needed to wait until the water from the tap stops spinning up here on the other half. Maybe the prions incorrect rotation over the magnetic field could cause an oposite reaction. I found that the copperlayer had become significantly thicker on the exposed parts.
There's a chemical problem with the water supply. I've called them and they say it will be fixed in about 11 hours, so maybe try again past midnight local time!
@@WouterWeggelaar OMG now DLS has become a factor in this experiment....
you got me good, i was thinking that my copper pipes in my waterheater will be gone soon
I tried it, it etched away my FR4 and left the copper behind. Maybe there's other metals in my particular drinking water that attack the base FR4 more than the copper?
lol. Well played.
😂😂😂
switch the magnet polarity. Dave was lucky to pick the right one by just chance.
This only works in Australia (not Austria) :-) On the northern hemisphere, only the copper is left behind.
did you forgot to mask/cover the fr4 material?
A far better method is to use bose-einstein condensate after processing with an ion implantation filter. I find that higher percentages of charged quarks reduce the etch time dramatically, although this can be temperature dependent. I find the etch times can be as short as several seconds with sufficient quantum entanglement of the Copper particles.
Brilliant. Loved it. :)
When you're done etching boards, you can use the the remaining water to top up the blinker fluid in your car.
@EEVblog
you should have put some "Signetics 25000 Series 9C46XN Random Access Write Only-Memory" on that board.
And the electricity used by the hotplate has already paid for the postage from China. Mind you, you could leave it overnight in a room temperature glass and wake up to your new pcb.
Yeah, no need for the elevated temp if you have the time to spare.
Some decades back when no corrosion preventive additives where available, car garages used this method to remove ferrous elements from cooling water. They used two tanks connected by a slow pump and one tank was stuffed with magnets. After slowly circulating the water for a couple of hours the water in the other tank was ready to be used in car cooling systems. Not sure if they ever thought of selling the other tanks content as an etching solution.
I actually think this could be a simple solution for those who would like to try out making their own pcbs but do not want to invest in a cnc mill or the proper etching supplies. also great way to teach about it in school -like environments without havign to deal with as lot of safety regulations
I think you should pour the water more slowly, you are probably displacing most the FeCl3 with the vigorous agitation of the water flow.
Well played, sir.
Distillation is the way to go.. evaporate off the H2o leaving iron salts behind.
Maybe you should do a collaboration video with #Cody'sLab about the chemistry behind this..
Cody is great, I'm sure he'd have a field day with this.
I'm sure Cody could do this at any day of the year.
This has the signs of a great kick starter campaign.
You should leave PCB in running water, then FeCl ions will constantly renewing.
This will only work in Australia. In Europe the water molecules spin opposite. So, here we need a capacitor on the bottom of the glass instead of a magnet.
This is how I've always etched my boards, works a treat! You might want to use a stronger magnet and have the water running for 30 minutes, low flow. That way it's much faster. If you don't have a magnet you can just boil / evaporate down some water, the more the better.
Video, or it didn't happen.
I used to distill my drinking water with a small Nutriteam distiller. What was left from four liters of water was about 50mL of brown nasty smelling liquid. It looked like whisky and smelled like a cross between sewerage and chemicals. This was Boston water which I believe was the fourth cleanest in the US at the time. I was also etching my PCBs at the time and I never thought of trying that with the crap left behind.
Every year. You get me EVERY DAMN YEAR!
In order to replicate your experiment here in Greece, we had to reverse the magnets and turn the water flow bottom-up, due to the different magnetic field in the upper hemisphere!
Very timely : )
Useful video 👍
At this rate my copper pipes would be done in 6 years.
Copper in your drinking water is nice.
Willy Kling hehe
and it does not run at 80°C
pahom do you think he's serious? Just being close to April 1st I'm a little sus. I've set up the same experiment to see haha.
Ambient Noize almost
When I was in high school, we used a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, muriatic acid, and water for etching our boards. :)
The first board I ever etched was drawn out with a fine-tipped sharpie. Nothing fancy, just something to support a couple 12V fans and an inductive probe for the hot end on my 3D printer.
Looks pretty janky, but works just fine. Still installed, though that printer was retired years ago.
So I am no expert, but I have done several dozen etches with both ferric chloride, and hydrochloric acid + hydrogen peroxide. I use photoresist, but have also done marker boards and toner transfers. Currently I design and etch 2-5 boards a month.
I have tested all of my different Sharpie markers on the buffer margins of my boards while etching. I have tried black, red, green, blue, yellow, and silver.
I also have several of the cheap black Chinese art supply markers that are sold for pcb etching on AliEx/eBay. The Chinese markers work reasonably well. They don't cover the applied area 100%. By this I mean, even after coating/drawing a trace multiple times until the area appears completely (ridiculously over-) covered, the etchant will still cause small perforations and imperfections through the marked areas. These are usually very small, randomly distributed and non-critical IMO. I get similar results when I do a toner transfer based etch.
However, Sharpie's are in whole different league of crap. Black will barely mask anything useful. By the time my etch is complete for a photoresist setup with Sharpie in the margins, the black Sharpie is 50-60% compromised. The area is so poorly masked I have zero confidence that the trace is capable of whatever current capabilities the copper clad/trace width was designed for. It's so bad that, despite thoroughly cleaning and adding copious amounts of flux, it is virtually impossible to uniformly cover the area/trace in solder. My post etch cleaning routine is identical to my photoresist prep clean, works well, and is loosely based on the Dupont Riston dry film photoresist datasheet.
The 50-60% masked results for black Sharpie were my best results with several different black Sharpie markers (all branded, but different packaging/tip variations sold). The other colors are far worse. Blue left around 25-35% of the margin materials by the end of the etch, Red left around 10-15%, Yellow was totally etched away. Silver causes some kind of terrible chemical reaction that causes the copper to react and form a rainbow of colors along with a weird textured alloy/oxide layer that is probably toxic by the looks of it.
They are all pretty much useless junk IMO after thoroughly testing them. If all I had were Sharpie markers to do a junk prototype that is non-critical, I'd still go get a better alternative or wait.
The Chinese markers aren't great. They dry up fast and are a pain. If you want to buy 1, don't, buy 10.
Sharpie's are dye based media. You need a real marker instead, something that leaves a physical waterproof dried substrate on the surface not a thin dye that intended to soak or penetrate.
Perhaps I could get better results by just using a Sharpie by itself. Maybe the etch time is just much shorter and it gets slightly less degraded somehow (doubtful). I have compared the black Sharpie to the Chinese markers on the same board margins. There is no real comparison, the Chinese markers are several orders of magnitude better than a Sharpie. Personally I consider the 'just use a sharpie' advice as complete nonsense in practice. I've yet to find anyone demonstrably etch a useful design using one. Even this board shown was removed before it was completely etched as would be required with a real design, and yet the sides of the covered areas are clearly compromised already, and even with the limited viewing angle, after cleaning, the body of the masked region shows signs of the etchant penetrating the mask considerably. In my experience, these problems only get worse at the very end of the etch. Even if the last 2% of copper remaining is ignored in favor of using an art knife post-etch (something I occasionally do with tight photoresist designs) the Sharpie is useless garbage by this stage.
Of course these are just my experience/experiments. I've thought about uploading some results like this but I'm more embarrassed about the sad state of early designs and such. Maybe I will one day soon though.
Thanks for the upload and ideas.
-Jake
Cool story, bro!
(maybe check your calendar)
My girlfriend, April, says that you have to boil the water off by distillation and add water until the concentration reaches a low PH acid state. You can also add vinegar. 😜
Man I loved this video!! Cool seeing you do an experiment and playing around with an idea! Fun vid and a nice little change up! Edit: Just realized it was 4/1/19!! Got me DAVE!!
Wow, never made the link before that the Ferric chloride in the tanks at the treatment works is the same ferric chloride used for pcb etching!
You should have ended the vid by dropping a tea bag into the glass ;)
OK, you got me (and apparently quite a few others). I just remembered that days arrive at Australia before the rest of the world, so this was posted after March 31 on Dave's calendar. Well played, sir.
I've worked with water as an etchent before but I've had less succesful results than this. I do find that it works better at certain times of the year. Early spring is optimal as I suspect they have to treat the spring run off that gets in the streams a little more aggressively. Of course there are natural additions to the water that an experimenter can supplement to enhance the etching effect. Steer manure is just an example of a natural additive that increases the effect. Thanks for the video.
i liked this ! good practical joke and well thought out nice work
Had to check the upload date since Its 1st of April. Will definately try this out
Oh I just love this.
You can see the vapour escaping in the time-lapse. I guess he added some persulfate or H2O2 + HCl, which should etch the copper as well ;D
I think that's just because it was at 75C, but he definitely had some colorless etchant in there.
H2oHS is the new RoHS compliance. Non-hazardous substances and water-etched.
Didn't know about that, will have to investigate, thanks.
You actually did it!
They get better every year :-)
Reminds me of those good old days as a poor student. With the lines drawn with a marker (more or less copying the schematic) and the PCB in a jar full of rainwater half an hour in the blazing sun.
Doesn't work nowadays, as there sadly is almost no acid rain anymore.
I see a new kickstarter launch imminent, Cant wait to buy it bottled. And its not even April fools day in the UK yet! great video. 😂
There are also magnetic descalers that you can clip around your water line. I bet they work almost as well for removing scale as for increasing the iron chloride concentration. Maybe you can try one of those next year.
As much as I love that it worked, it turned out to be a 64/16 = 4, you just cross out the sixes and get 4/1 = 4. You get the correct answer / correct outcome but for incorrect reasoning.
Still gonna thumb it up for making me aware of everything + pinning TheBackyardChemist's comment.
Good one Dave, the date published threw me of a bit until I realized where you are. :)
always be suspicious in the week before and after 1th April :)
The best one so far...
As an April 1stist, I completely believe this worked.
Good one, Dave!
Not as good as Lockheed-Martin offering a free sample of the scent of Uranus though!
3:30 "please excuse the crudeness of my model" Nice doc Bown reference. :D:D
@10:25 "Tell him he's dreaming" worth a try though Dave :)
Seems more likely you concentrated some ammonium persulfate by mistake. :)
Who'd have thought... Homeopathic PCB etching! I bet it makes the remaining traces all the more healthy!
Ah I already have feeling that todays date greatly influenced making of this innovative video :)
I am impressed by the amount of effort and research you put into these videos. I am looking forward to producing my first water etched pcb (first ever homemade pcbs in fact) and save a few buck and shipping time.
Yes! So much effort and research :D
Mind Blown ! I wonder if you had a larger quantity of water in the container and kept the magnet at the bottom, and PCB at bottom of container it may improve the etch time. As we all know, ferric chloride becomes exhausted after a while and your low concentration FeCl3 even more so
Awful lot of water wastage though.
I really hated the ferric chloride route to etch pcbs. was hard getting it even, especially with very thin wires. I ended up using hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide. To get it faster too I used usually a warm solution. You could etch a board in about 6 seconds. Downside was the gas cloud that formed. :D
I bet if you tried this in Flint Michigan it would eat thru the whole board
Sad, but true...
It would eat through the whole glass my man
Or lead plated
Lived in Flint most of my life, don't find it funny but your right. Other than lead contamination the water here has a truly insane amount of chlorine present. So much that a freshly drawn glass smells more like a swimming pool than potable water. My mother taught me very early on how to distill water even though she didn't know that was actually what she was doing. My father taught me to do so with a filtered picture. Still I preferred drinking juices, pop or using the filtered and distilled water to make tea. Always found tea taste so much better after filtering and distilling it.
However etching a PCB with our water is inadvisable for another reason and no it's not the lead. We have serious problems with lime scale buildup. A fresh tap screen will last about a week or two before it starts to get wonky. Shower heads I have to tear apart monthly to get all the buildup out of them, usually grab a needle to punch the buildup out of the dispenser holes. I have in my basement right now a piece of PVC pipe with so much lime scale in it that you can not pour water through it.
So yeah, plenty of chlorine to etch a PCB, but your going to need a chisel to find it after the lime scale deposits all over it.
In Flint, you could use the water as a replacement for solder paste at high enough concentrations.
as soon as he handled the magnets it came to my mind that we have the 1st of april today.
A quick search shows Ferric Chloride to boil at 350º Celsius. Reasonably easy to distill from the water.
It works! I managed to speed up the reaction by putting it under a graphene spaceheater.
I'd like to know if the magnet made a difference. Be great to see another video with both unaltered tap water and perhaps another magnet concentrated sample that was let run twice as long.
A controlled experiment would be better, I was too lazy.
i haven't etched a board since i discovered PCB WAY, here in the UK its actually cheaper to have them made abroad, if you price up all the tackle you need and price up your boards there is no need to spin your own anymore.
10/10 Kickstarter material
ha ha i like how he rinses it off when he takes it out of the glass lol
What? come on Dave, no control experiment? this is breaking rule 0! You should have placed a second board in a glass of water without concentrating to see if there was actually a difference. though I suppose that is good enough for Australia, no worries.
I have been using ammonium perchloride for removing copper from boards for gold recovery.
There appears to be some debate about what the reaction is. My question is does it matter? The copper is being removed from common tap water. My mind is blown either way. Thanks Dave for the content.
Haha! well done Dave, magnets!
You may be able to try leaving the PCB in overnight using a submersible heater, or try any regular household acid. I've had good results with vinegar or plain Coke (phoshporic acid). As @TheBackyardChemist stated below, the acid is only used as a buffer.
I'm kind of sceptical if the magnet even did anything to concentrate the ferric chloride.