To Be Or Not To Be
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Well, I got 4 plates etched to that are part of the previously posted experiment. All plates were run for one hour. I used a dial indicator to measure the etching depth and visually inspected a highly magnified scan image for quality.
Line widths are 3, 7, 11, 13, 30 and 70 mil reading left to right in the grid plates. The squiggle image is from the same sampler plate and to the same scale.
Plate 1 -etched depth 3 mil -5v -.25 amps -electrode distance 4.0”
Plate 2 -etched depth 3 mil -5v -.25 amps -electrode distance 2.0”
Plate 3 -etched depth 3 mil -1v -.25 amps -electrode distance 2.0”
Plate 4 -etched depth 3 mil -1v -.25 amps -electrode distance 4.0”
A gross degradation occurs when moving the plates closer together (2 inch vs. 4 inch) as seen in plate 2.
Plates close together (2 inches) at reduced voltage (1v vs. 5v) made a dramatic improvement in etch quality.
Plate 4 was back at 4 inch distance and with 1 volt was fairly sharp but not as good as I would have thought at the reduced voltage based on the results of plate 3.
I am also seeing an outline around the etched area regardless of setting. This might be pre-lifting of the resist.
After obtaining the direction I need to be going in, which looks like low voltage, then I will experiment with time to see how deep I can etch without corrosion. I was surprised that the etch depth was constant regardless of the voltage.
