Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

I'm confused about the need to warm etchant.
I use 100 ml store bought hydrogen peroxide (30% peroxide and 70% water) with 50 ml of storebought muriactic acid
which is 70% water......
and my etch time has never been longer than 5 minutes at room temperatures.

What does heating etchant gain you?
 

 

When we used to etch boards at work with the ammonium persulfate we used a corningware like an oven safe pan and put it on a small electric hot plate. The etchant will pit the pan but it took a long time before it did.

For ferric chloride a friend of mine used to warm it in the microwave then etch his boards.

 

 

From: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2016 12:48 P M
To: Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] Re: Heater for Etchant Bath

 

 

Another glass fish tank heater user here, though I've switched to mostly muriatic acid/hydrogen peroxide. My only real complaint is that it's got a "minimum fill" line, so I have to make a giant batch of etchant no matter what size board I do. I often end up not using the tank to do smaller stuff because of this. My tank is also flat (looks like an ant farm box), so it would be even worse if it were larger.

Good luck on it!