--- In
Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, Mark Lerman <mlerman@...> wrote:
>
> The silver acetate seems to go for about $2 USD per gram from
> "legitimate" sources, less from ebay.
Is that lab grade or technical grade? There's a HUGE price
difference between the 99% purity stuff, and the 99.9% purity
stuff. :-)
For that matter, has anyone researched how to produce Silver
Acetate themselves? It's probably a lot more complex than
simply dropping some Silver coins into a bottle of vinegar.
Ok, having looked it up on wikipedia, it looks like there's a
three step process (Silver + Nitric Acid->Silver Nitrate +
Sodium Carbonate -> Silver Carbonate + Acetic Acid ->
Silver Acetate.). That's not too complex. I think the real
problem with the cost is that the price of Silver is rather
incredible at the moment.
> They mix 1 g with 2.5ml of ammonium hydroxide plus .2ml formic
> acid. Assuming you can get 2 ml of ink from the mixture and that
> the cost of the ammonium hydroxide and formic acid are negligible
> (???), the cost would be about $1 USD/ml.
Ammonium Hydroxide is simply ammonia in water.
Formic Acid isn't too hard to synthesize (via a couple of routes),
so it should be reasonably cheap. Don't get it on you. It's
the active ingredient in bee and ant stings.
> Since you are only drawing traces, it shouldn't be too
> expensive, especially if you can reuse any ink wasted in head
> cleaning. Anyone interested in a group buy of the chemicals?
I doubt that the cleaned ink from the head could be reused. But,
a little care in batching up the plots could minimize waste.
> Mark
Dave <- Not a chemist, but I occasionally bathe in H2O!