electro eching of picks

[ObiWonShinobi]

well.. like i said... "I wonder how long"
maybe battery acid would work better?
would allow for other materials.
as long as the resist pen still holds up...
dunno...

[CVScam]

I haven't made an updated video yet but I have played around a bit more with saltwater etching. The best setup I have found is the following: Sand or use auto/aircraft stripper to remove the oringinal paint from the hacksaw blade then paint it with lacquer paint(be sure to paint the edges of the blade). I tried enamel, primer, and even epoxy paint but the lacquer paint stuck the best the metal. I then printed the templates on my laser printer and it is possible to iron the template to the blade but the lacquer has to be 100% dry. I just cut the templates out of the paper and then painted the outline of them on the blade using a different color paint. The next part is the most critical is using sharp tool like an icepick trace around the template on the blade you want to see a bare metal outline of the template(a little bit bigger because you lose metal as it etches). The ideal is to have nice even thickness lines, also it is handy to etch "break" lines. If you are tracing a 1/2 diamond shape just follow the diagonal etch lines to the saw edge that way you can remove the pick from the rest of the blade if it doesn't etch all the way through the metal evenly. The next part is to find a bucket/glass/ 2 liter bottle for the salt water and a battery/power supply. The voltage doesn't seem to matter I used from a 1.5 volt battery to a 24 volt golf cart charger but the amount of current controls the cutting time. The amount of current is controlled by the maximum the power supply/battery can produce and the salinity of the water, I attached the +(red) wire to a bare spot on the template blade and I attached the - negitive wire to a bare hacksaw blade. I plug in the power or the battery then I add salt to the water untill I see bubbles forming on the -negitive hooked up hacksaw blade. The got nice even etching at 1.5 to 2 hours at 250 milliamps to 500 milliamps(.25 to .5 amps).

[Shrub]

well.. like i said... "I wonder how long"
maybe battery acid would work better?
would allow for other materials.
as long as the resist pen still holds up...
dunno...

Listen im not doing you down here but the process is a bit more scientific than simply finding somthing corrosive and banging some current in to it,

Its all ballenced chemicaly, each metal (the electrode and the work piece) is selected to combine with each other and also the chemical its submierged in completes the reaction,

If you start mixing things around you can end up in hospital, i know someone who mixed an acid and an alkali together the wrong way wrong and made himself blind in both eyes for life,

The process being discussed on these pages is the most basic and safest method you can do,

Other than battery acid etc removeing any etching pen you use getting it hot will be very dangourus both because of the acid and the fumes,

DO some proper exchaustive research on the subject and various chemicals and their properties before you start experimenting,

[ObiWonShinobi]

Hey, I freely admit I'm crazy.
But don't worry, I'm not STUPID.

no mixie nuttin witout reedin furzt!

(Hey CVS! Saturn Rulez!!!)

[CVScam]

I didn't really talk about safety issues but I guess I better address a few. The paint stripper is volatile, flammable, and will burn unprotected skin after a while. The lacquer paint has strong fumes. The etching process makes little bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen at the -negative terminal so a bad connection might make a spark(I don't think there would be enough hydrogen to ignite). Don't let the two piece of metal touch in the water or your power supply could short out and melt(I have a 1 amp fuse on my current setup just in case). I was etching a stainless steel feeler and the paint didn't stick to the edge so it got etched very thin and sharper than a razor blade and I cut the hell out of my finger.

[ObiWonShinobi]

ouch.....yeah sounds painful,
I wasn't thinking of using power either.
to many impurities, and chance of electroplating with something weird...
anyone ever seen a motherboard of a chain smoker?
fixxed a friends moms 'puter..... make that REPLACED.. no fixable.

the fans pull in the smoke... and the nic was stuck to the board.
and was pulled INTO the traces on the board.
was rusting from the inside out at a rapid pace.

so many tar pits in that mobo I halfway expected to find a mammoth!

[Shrub]

I had a idea for you to try last night,

Score around the edges with a blade and maybe you will get sharper edges, you wouldnt need to go deep just mark it enough so you have a definate line marked in the metal,

[raven252000]

i wonder if you can use a sharpy marker to seal the surface like you can with circuit etching. has any one tried?

[Safety0ff]

As long as this post is being temporarily revived:

I did a bit of research for electro chemically polishing picks. I had some recipes for the chems and a rough idea for the currents required, but overall setup wouldn't be worth the difference between it and mechanical finishing methods. Anyways, diy it'd be quite difficult but not impossible for those willing to go the extra distance. Some companies offer it as well (companies that do metal finishing.) It's also used for polishing medical tools.

[paulvalente]

This is extremely cool, has anybody considered spark erosion for pick making, I don't think I 've ever seen such a finish as that you can get from spark erosion.

[Jaakko]

Spark erosion or EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) is a very slow process. For hobbyist doings it might be fun to use it and watch it, but not for profit of any kind.

The nice thing about EDM is that you can machine just about anything that is electrically conductive. You can machine for example hardened materials, carbides and other hard or brittle stuff that is impossible to machine otherwise.

[vitti]

if nothing else this is a fun little science experiment. I just stuck a hacksaw blade in a setup like described here. I took some laser printed pick template pieces and some lettering and ironed it onto the blade. It's been in about 20 minutes now. We'll see how it turns out shortly.

I'm more interested in the possibility of using this method to etch text or designs into the picks by making a laser printer printed negative iron on mask.

I'll post my results.

[raven252000]

i tried it today with a battery jump pack it ate the metal decently fast and would work nice for handle etching. to cut picks in wiper inserts it will take enlarging the size of the temple a bit to offset the corrosion but a neat way to rough out a lot of picks at once.

[vitti]

well here's my results:

I just used scraps of laser printer printed templates I had laying around. The toner transfer was far from perfect on the lettering so it's missing letters and parts of letters but that's not from the etching, it's from the toner transfer.




The "6" at the end was at the bottom of the jar laying in a pile of salt. It etched too fast and unevenly so it doesn't look as crisp as the letters.

[bumber]

I was going to say "I guess you did account for the backwards lettering" but you did say it was from scrap, so maby you did

Either way I like them so far, I would (like everything else thats cool) like to give this a shot. It would be interesting to see what we can come up with...Just someting that would be neat would be the cross hatch pattern like on a gun handle or something to do with handle designs.