Hacker News Reader

Comment by arbitrandomuser | Hacker News Reader

I find this method less mentioned but it works way better than the others and the chemicals are much easily sourcable , A fresh mixture of HCL (toilet cleaning acid) and hydrogen peroxide( available from pharmacy) works much faster than ferric chloride at etching .

View on HN

True, but with this method you must be more careful than when using ferric chloride, in order to not inspire vapors from the etching bath, which may contain HCl.

Therefore this is better done outdoors or under a chemical fume hood.

In the industry, such etchings are always done under chemical fume hoods. At home, it is likely that you must work outdoors. My home has an open balcony, where I can do such operations.

Oh we used to do this in a bucket at in the hallway, just outside of the class room. This was about 15 years ago in Eastern Europe, for an electronics course. For bonus, the tracing paint was well after expiration date, so the result came out defective often, so we had to redo it. Fun times.

I used and avow that method. One thing I would like to know, though, is if it's essentially the same method as the "cupric chloride" one. I'm guessing if you reuse the previous etching solution and add fresh HCl and H2O2 (which I did) one should get both etching reactions.

In any case it works very well, and it is safe, something which commenters in another hackaday article some time ago were doubting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com