The Significant Advantages of Our Chemical Etching Precision Metal Milling

Complexity made simple

Photo etching has similarities to a printing process in that the part designs can be immensely intricate without having an impact on the tooling or production process. Photo etching can produce complex parts that would be either impossible or impractical to produce by stamping or laser cutting.

Thin metal

Extremely thin metal can be machined without distortion; dimensional accuracy actually increases as metal thickness decreases.

Material Properties Unaltered

Photo etching imparts no mechanical stresses on metal substrates. Where stamping, punching and die-cutting impart shearing deformation and laser and water-jet cutting can leave ablative deformation, photochemical machining simply dissolves the unneeded metal, leaving a flat and burr-free part.

Magnetically soft materials can be fabricated while retaining their optimum permeability.

Clean and free of contaminants

Raw materials are thoroughly cleaned before imaging; after etching, and after stripping and before and after any subsequent metal finishing processes.

Parts are inherently free of burrs.

The Photo Chemical Milling process produces burr free components, thus eliminating the need for costly time-consuming de-burring.

Tight, consistent tolerances

High accuracies; depending on material thickness tolerances down to +/- 0.01 mm can be achieved.

Half-etched forming

Forming lines can be half etched into the metal to allow components to be formed by hand.Prototype to Full Production.

Photo Chemical Milling can be used to make one or a million parts, with the identical tooling used every time. This allows the engineer or designer to develop their concept from prototype to full production quickly and easily.

Half etched component.

Tooling and Delivery Advantages

Tooling and set-up costs are extremely low compared to hard tooling.

Initial quantities of newly designed parts can be produced on short notice - sometimes within days after the design is conceived.

Revisions to part designs are similarly implemented quickly and economically.

Identification Marks

Company logos, part numbers or other identifying marks can easily be etched into the surface during manufacture at no extra cost.