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It definitely works. I’m just not sure how. The various sites say the salt just ‘speeds up’ the process. But if you just leave the boards in peroxide and vinegar, nothing really happens. The salt seems to be the key. I just pour a bit over un-etched areas and it goes nuts. However on my first board, I’m thinking either the table vinegar I was using was too weak, or too much salt.. eventually the process just stopped working.
From: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2016 5:36 PM
To: Homebrew PCBs <Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] Etching with vinegar, peroxide and salt
Quinn Dunki etches like that, she gets pretty good results, slow, but I guess you know what they say about winning the race.
On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 12:29 PM, 'Brad' unclefalter@... [Homebrew_PCBs] <Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Stumbled across this method while reading up on etching. I’m still waiting on my ferric chloride, which you cannot buy around here.
Anyway, the procedure is ‘simply’ mix cleaning vinegar (higher acid concentration than regular vinegar) and peroxide at 1:1 and let her rip, adding table salt to speed up up or maintain the reaction.
Here’s a few pics of the process:
Further along:
And almost done:
In terms of how it worked.. not bad… kind of slow. On my first PCB, I made a batch of ‘etchant’ from peroxide and regular vinegar and dumped it in. I thought it had to keep bubbling to work, so I kept adding salt.. but I think I killed the reaction. I then went out and bought the more powerful cleaning vinegar, took the board out (it had been sitting in that first bath for about 1.5hrs) drained the old solution, then put in a new batch, again 1:1 with the more powerful vinegar. The board upon removal had little bits of green PCB showing but there was still tons of copper, in a finish that is sort of like what rusty pennies get when you put them in cola. I put the board back in.. wow… that remaining copper really began to disappear fast. I also put the whole thing in my laundry tub and put a few inches of hot water under while gently rocking it back and forth. That’s how it got to the state shown in the third picture.
I’m not sure why, but there were some stubborn parts where the original shiny copper was still holding out. I poured a bit of salt onto those spots and it seemed to help get things moving.
Anyway, off to try to finish it.. if anyone out there has more tips on this method I’m all ears. I like that it’s a lot less nasty than ferric, etc.