Etched enclosures

[vigilante397]

4 awesome things about it.
1. It actually works.
2. I managed to cram all the wires & veroboard into the box.
3. No noise!
4. It sounds sweet!

Hard to complain there

[Marcos - Munky]

This is my first Pro Co Rat ever! I've used Joe Davisson's diode opamp. Reverse etched by me (my first reverse etch), artwork by Adiel Ricci.

[vigilante397]

Looks great! I've tried dozens of other dirt pedals that I liked, but the Rat will always be my #1 favorite. Hope you're enjoying it!

[Marcos - Munky]

Looks great! I've tried dozens of other dirt pedals that I liked, but the Rat will always be my #1 favorite. Hope you're enjoying it!

Thanks, Nathan! In my opinion, this is one of those "why didn't I built it sooner?" circuits . I've been building some stuff for 15 years and didn't got to build a Rat or a Big Muff ever. Until now. And the next one is the Big Muff, just need some time to etch the enclosure and finish it .

[scumparty]

I etched my first-ever pedal and although it did not come out perfect, I am pretty happy with the results. It's a tubescreamer with aion's pcb.
 
I made a big mistake with the pnp and forgot to flip the image so I ended up using the cat but the lettering was not usable.
 I protected the side with tape, the  upper part with nail polish and did the lettering with a sharpie.
 Well, the ferric chloride ended up etching through the sharpie so I used an engraving bit on my dremel to go over them.
 I then used a silver paint pen to make them pop and sprayed a couple of layers of clear lacquer.

It is far from perfect, but I do like the rough look!

[duck_arse]

^ banksy! and you get to step on a cat.

[statzern]

Not perfect, but here's a couple enclosures I just finished up today. First time using an image on the Apollo one on the moon. Turned out pretty good. Little over-sanded up by the top left corner, oops...

Apollo one is Tremulus Lune with some simple mods (Lune = moon = Apollo heh)
Blood Orange is Orange Peel, also with some simple mods + buffered output.

Keep the pics coming everyone!

[deadastronaut]

we canny see em captain...

well i cant.. 

[stallik]

I can see them and they look fantastic. Nice job

[deadastronaut]

weird, i can see them now..

excellent...

[2weiund2wanzig]

This is my first worthy result.


Its for a xotic rc booster my son (10) is just soldering, the design elements and the name are his idea too - i just put them together.

I had some Problems with etching before, so this is my way after some experience:

• Sand 120 - 240 - 400 - 1000
• Print on injet-photopaper
• iron for about 5 Minutes
• Cool down and soak with warm water
• Peel of by rubbin softly with your fingers, use a sponge to remove rests
• Tape with parcel tape
• Place upside-up in a smal dish
• Repeatly put FeCl3 with a syringe on top of the pedal and watch it etch.
• rub with an old toothbrush from time to time
• when the result is ready rinse with water

There are 3 small spots where the toner seems to be underetched. I wonder if using warmer etching solution would speed up the process so smaller defects in the toner skin dont have the time to develop. Does anybody have experience with warm solution (like 50°C)

[2weiund2wanzig]

How did you do that? How can you paint the not-etched part of your housing?

[duck_arse]

2weiund2wanzig - welcome to the forum. nice first post; did you agonise over how to abbreviate each control legend down to 4 letters?

[2weiund2wanzig]

"BASS" and "GAIN" took just some hours but "TRBL" and "VOLM" were real pain! But i liked the"square" look
Thanks for the warm welcome, i am reading here since years so i don't feel new. I even didn't realize this was my first post  I have way to many hobbies ....

These are my first (not so good) attempts to pedal design:

An easy vibe:


tremolus lune: (not etched but .... )


morning glory: (yes... coffee)


himmelstrutz fettto

[duck_arse]

I'm probably going to regret asking, but what is a "himmelstrutz fettto" when it's at home?

[2weiund2wanzig]

http://www.himmelstrutz.com/
Its a great manufactured pedal from a great guy in sweden.

[statzern]

How did you do that? How can you paint the not-etched part of your housing?

Hey man, thanks for the reply. Those enclosures are what a lot of people on the forums call a "reverse etch," which means basically much more of the enclosure is etched than is not. So, no magic there - the paint IS on the etched part, its just that almost the whole surface of the enclosure was etched and the light parts were the mask.

See this most excellent tutorial for a good example of the process: http://music.codydeschenes.com/?page_id=2035

[statzern]

Does anybody have experience with warm solution (like 50°C)

In general, I do not need to warm FeCl with aluminum enclosures, as the reaction is quite vigorous and actually heats up the enclosure considerably. However, I do not use the syringe or dropper method. I pour my FeCl into a plastic container (Gladware type container) and place the enclosure facedown in the solution. I can only leave it there for about 10-15 seconds at a time or it gets too hot. Obviously, the amount of heat generated depends on the amount of metal exposed to the etchant, so for these "reverse" etches, it is a lot! I wait about 10-15 sec then take it out and rinse it in a utility sink which serves two purposes - it cools the enclosure and removes some of the oxidized layer. If I were to leave the enclosure in, it would get too hot to touch and melt the toner...

If you have a good enough transfer of your toner, you should be able to etch quite deep without defects. I cannot stress enough though, you cannot compromise with the toner transfer. It must be perfect or your work will be for nothing. I'm glad things are working for you, but if I were going to offer any advice regarding your method, I would say there is no need to sand down to 1000 grit before toner transfer unless you want a near-mirror type finish because something that smooth may be hard for the toner to adhere to. Also, taking your time with leveling the enclosure (the more coarse grits) so the iron makes good contact and ironing slowly and covering every square millimeter are the most important parts to the process.

Hope that is helpful.

[2weiund2wanzig]

Yes, that is really helpful. I am just preparing a "reverse etch" on 1590a. How do you know that you etched deep enough or that the etch is getting "unfocused" at the edges? Do you turn the housing from time to time to have a look or isn't that helpful because its to oxidatet and "dirty"?

[2weiund2wanzig]

My first reverse etch for two emerson em drive in 1590a:



I used the technique as mentioned by statzern. Its quite hard to see how deep the etch is while you are in the etching progress. I checked afeter every 50 dips in the FeCl3 after the watering and took 6 rounds in about 5 Minutes. I stopped when i saw some erodation on the details.
Some small problems with the details on "volume" and "gain", i think i should use some bigger font for that.