Electro Etching - Complete

It's quite difficult to find Copper Sulfate, but somehow I managed to find a small 100g bottle from Lacy West.

As this was a quick test, I just glued up a pile of waste plywood pieces into something able to support the piece being etched. They are kept more or less about 6 centimeters apart.

The first test plate was slightly damaged due to some over-enthusiastic filing to get a clean area for the wire to be soldered on. I also used a small bottle of TSPe to remove all the oil and fingerprints.

A used pasta sauce container is to be used to hold the electrolyte.

For a power supply, I got a pretty nice unit off Banggood, the cps-3205 capable of up to 5A current supply, and variable from 0 to 32 volts.

I went with 1v, for my etching voltage. The current draw during my tests were hardly taxing on the power supply, topping out at 150mAh.

The cathode appears to have worked as described by various websites, the copper plating onto the cathode.

This is the result after one hour in the electrolyte, checked at 15 minute intervals.

This is side-on through the usb microscope. Seems like a fair good bit of etching was done. 

The toner came off easily with a piece of tape. Some of it could not be removed, and I used a fingernail to scratch it off.

Didn't have any proper oxidization agents, so I just used a black sharpie to colour in the etched areas as a test :)

I thought this looked really nice!

This is the inverse of the previously etched image.

The edges are definitely more deeply etched than the center. Several sources have indicated that this would be the case, and a way to help with this is to use a cathode in the shape of a grid, not a solid plate like I have done.

Here's the reverse give the sharpie treatment :)