Monday, February 21, 2011

PCB Etching Tank Design

I started making my own PCBs (more on that later) with a rather crappy "etching tank" from MG Chemicals. It came with a crack on it which I JB welded. The JB weld failed (as it always does), and I ended up with a ferric chloride leak ;/. This, along with the suboptimal shape and lack of heater, got me to finally make my own.

The design is rather simple. It's made out of .08" acrylic sheet. It has a (unregulated) heater and air port. I designed it all in Autodesk Inventor (FRC FTW :)).

Hopefully I'll remember to take pictures and post them when this is done. I'm currently about 1/2 done building it.
 
The entire assembly. The heater and connectors are missing.

All the .08' acrylic sheet parts. The air sparger has a bunch of .03" holes in it to make the bubbles.

The main sides of the tank.

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