D
1: Your paranoia is warranted. imho.?
I too embarked on a DIY Etching setup which included the whole buffet of parts chemicals and storing them.
?After storing the chemicals in a explosion proof cabinet. +/- 6 months later? rust started to appear in the cabinet.
quite a bit of rust. While in my scenario Im not to happy that my once pristine cabinet in now full of surface rust. I am happy?
that its not my machines or the both of them! If you have valuable rust free machines? invest in storing the caustic chems properly.
-Sam

Dave,
I did just that.
Plastic container liquid tight.
Inside a 6/7 gallon pool bucket.
Still rusted.


I now keep the chems outside in a plastic bin. no more inside shop where metal resides.
On another note. the chems are so inexpensive. and easy to make on the fly.
I keep thinking Ill discard and make as needed. even if the chems were 10x as much?
the costs pale in comparison to my machines rusting. I easily pay more for 1 cutting bit
than the chems are worth.

If you never see rust? you are lucky.
Sam

On Tue, 5 Mar 2019 15:32:36 -0600, you wrote:

On 3/5/2019 2:45 PM, Harvey White wrote:

On Tue, 5 Mar 2019 13:05:18 -0600, you wrote:

After seeing some guys post on leaving his etchant tank out in his shop,
and the next day his drill press post was solid rust... I was thinking
that I really don't want to mess up my steel building or anything in it.
That said, if I use the muriatic/peroxide etchant outside, and then pour
it into a sealed container, I should be ok?

Define "sealed".....

In a one gallon glass or plastic bottle like the one the muriatic acid
is sold in.

Main problem with some enclosures is that the caps or seals are
attacked by the HCL. Rubbermaid cereal containers (inexpensive, but
while the bodies withstand the HCL, the seals don't).

Or if not if I really want
to be sure, what is the best of the other etchants that works the
fastest with no worry of rusting my stuff? Or am I being too paranoid?

Likely ammonium persulfate or ammonium perchloride. That still will
release extra oxygen here and there, but not acid fumes, afaik....

You could put it in a jug, say one used for distilled water or the
same one used for the acid (if you know someone who uses pool acid,
see if they have an old empty bottle.

I was tempted to (and almost did) get one of those brown resin
containers to put the acid in (suitably bottled).

No, you are not being too paranoid. I'd store it outside. I suspect
that the main problem is the fumes from the acid, but then again, no
idea of how well the container was sealed.

what would work should be a bottle designed for acid storage, say from
a chemical supply store.

Isn't a Hydrogen peroxide bottle a brown resin bottle like this one?

Yep, H2O2 tends to decompose in the presence of light/ultraviolet
light.

I'd wonder about the caps, though, for the HCL.

Harvey

After seeing some guys post on leaving his etchant tank out in his shop, and the next day his drill press post was solid rust... I was thinking that I really don't want to mess up my steel building or anything in it. That said, if I use the muriatic/peroxide etchant outside, and then pour it into a sealed container, I should be ok? Or if not if I really want to be sure, what is the best of the other etchants that works the fastest with no worry of rusting my stuff? Or am I being too paranoid?
Thanks

On 06/03/19 06:05, Dave wrote:

After seeing some guys post on leaving his etchant tank out in his shop, and the next day his drill press post was solid rust... I was thinking that I really don't want to mess up my steel building or anything in it. That said, if I use the muriatic/peroxide etchant outside, and then pour it into a sealed container, I should be ok? Or if not if I really want to be sure, what is the best of the other etchants that works the fastest with no worry of rusting my stuff? Or am I being too paranoid?

I just put a slab of polystyrene over the container. If it's a bit warped, put a bit of wood on top of that.

I've had the same setup and *same* etchant in my lab over 5+ years, topped up with a bit of HCl every time i use it.

It's the HCl vapours that cause the corrosion.

I would suggest the original HCl bottle (or something like it) inside a 5-gallon bucket with a lid, and put a container with some large surface area inside the bucket as well. Any HCl vapour will get neutralised by the baking soda. Check occasionally that you don't need to top it up. (The HCl even gets through the walls of the original bottle, so you will need something to neutralise it nearby.)

Donald.
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On 2019-03-05 2:05 p.m., Dave wrote:

After seeing some guys post on leaving his etchant tank out in his shop, and the next day his drill press post was solid rust... I was thinking that I really don't want to mess up my steel building or anything in it. That said, if I use the muriatic/peroxide etchant outside, and then pour it into a sealed container, I should be ok? Or if not if I really want to be sure, what is the best of the other etchants that works the fastest with no worry of rusting my stuff? Or am I being too paranoid?

Thanks

I don't think you need to get too worried about this issue. Sure, leaving HCl fumes around steel or machinery is a bad thing but if you take a few sensible precautions you shouldn't have a problem. HCl is sold in pool shops in secure plastic bottles and you can repurpose them for keeping CuCl2 etching solution without too much trouble. I keep my solution in a thick plastic laundry detergent bottle with a childproof cap secure on a high shelf and clearly labeled. It's been like that for years with no problems. You're more likely to liberate fumes while you're actually doing the etching if you use a bubbler.

Actually I've found ferric chloride to be much harder on plastic and glass bottles than copper chloride. CuCls is just marvelous, I changed to it about 8 years ago and I'll never go back. I've been making boards for about 50 years and wish I'd known about it all those years ago.

Morris

On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 10:14:29 -0600, you wrote:

<snip>

? Ok, good info. So if I do my etching under my 24x24x14 carport
outside, I should be good and the carport should escape rusting too. I
think I can rest easy on the rust thing now as I have enough info on how
not to be careless. I have to also realize I am a noob and have to
design stuff to etch. Or download other peoples stuff to etch I probably
won't be etching all of the time to worry about it.

In a sense, there's really not a "design stuff to etch", but there are
things to consider in terms of process.

If you're using toner transfer, and especially just starting, I'd
suggest no thinner than about 12 mil traces, 16 being better.
Naturally that depends on the design.

Larger pads are better if possible. Normal traces could be 16 or 24,
but you'll get an idea of how much that is in terms of the board.

If you're using EAGLE (for example), draw a polygon around the entire
board on the bottom layer, following the dimension line. Name it
"GND" for the bottom (assuming you're doing single sided boards).

In EAGLE, the command to remove the effects (but not the polygon) is
RIPUP @

That's a ground fill, ground pour, etc. It fills some unused areas of
the board and reduces etchant use.

Mostly, for beginning stuff, larger traces are better because the
process can tolerate more pinholes and the like. Once you get down to
10 mil traces with 10 mil spacing, the process is less forgiving, and
you'll have to be a bit better at it.

A note on EAGLE (and likely some other programs), the size of the pad
is optimized for a board house, so it's rather thin in diameter. This
can be difficult when drilling holes and soldering. In a board house
produced board, this hole is automatically plated through and is more
sturdy as well as has more contact area for solder.

You may want to start making a library with larger pads for parts
depending on how you design things. I'd especially suggest this for
single sided boards, although the nature of the parts lead (through
board and then soldered) tends to hold things in place.


Harvey