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What is Chemical Etching??

Metal etching, which is also known as chemical etching, photo etching, acid etching or photo chemical milling (PCM) is a manufacturing process which uses ferric chloride as an etching chemistry to produce intricate and highly precise precision metal components. https://www.qualitetch.com/service/photo-chemical-etching/

Chemical 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, and it’s very fast to produce the artwork phototooling compared to other processes needing physical tooling.

How does the process work?
· The metal is cut, cleaned and then laminated with a blue UV photo-sensitive resist, which is then printed with your desired CAD artwork design profile.
· After printing your design, the metal is then developed, which effectively washes away any unexposed photoresist from the print process, leaving a raw metal profile track line for the etchant to etch through the metal.
· After etching out the profile design, we simply remove the blue UV photo sensitive resist to leave the raw metal parts either loose or tabbed into the larger fretwork sheet.
· Click the link here to see the complete process start to finish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZANSwZ8cI0&t=70s

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.

· Artwork is in CAD format and 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 of your required profile, but many of our competitors charge up to £100+ for this service.

· Our 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.

· Tolerances offered from +-0.025mm dependant 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
& Many other metals

If Qualitetch 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.