Off the cuff use for our printers....spit balling an idea.

[SkipGear]

Was watching an older Luke Towan video a over the weekend and he was describing the process of photo etching his own parts for something or other. It suddenly occurred to me that we have the ability to skip a few steps now by using the screen on our printer.

Draw up your piece as a 3d object, run it through the slicer then use the sliced file to expose your photo resist on the sheet.

Just an idea, haven't tried it yet, where's @Chris333 to give this a shot?

Would only work for simple pieces, no half etch or two sided etches but could speed things up.

[Chris333]

It should work, but if you drew up the design you could print it out on a clear transparency just as easy. And you could use the UV cure light to expose it.

[peteski]

It should work, but if you drew up the design you could print it out on a clear transparency just as easy. And you could use the UV cure light to expose it.

Often the ink density on clear transparency is not perfectly opaque, resulting in poor quality etchings.  Placing a sensitized copper clad PC board, or brass sheet, then using a slice to expose it might give good results. But the size would be limited to the screen size.

[ednadolski]

Draw up your piece as a 3d object, run it through the slicer then use the sliced file to expose your photo resist on the sheet.

Seems it could work,  tho just my own $0.02 is that I prefer to avoid trying to re-invent plowed ground, and if someone like say PPD already has a good process then I’m inclined to let them do what they are already good at.  Re-purposing a dedicated mechanism or process in this era of specialization tends to lead toward suboptimal results.  But I hate to be negative or discouraging, and if you think you may be on to something then of course by all means have at it — that is of course where innovations come from.

Ed

[Lemosteam]

What if you double stick taped the metal to be etched onto the build plate, re- zeroed, and printed a few layers as the resin directly onto the metal to act as the photo resist, clean cure and dunk?

Wonder if the enchant would seep under the printed resin?

[SkipGear]

Really thinking more about just simple quick home etched stuff. If it was a complex piece, I would probably farm it out also. Would be good for quick proof of concept and testing purposes instead of waiting weeks for turnaround.

[SkipGear]

What if you double stick taped the metal to be etched onto the build plate, re- zeroed, and printed a few layers as the resin directly onto the metal to act as the photo resist, clean cure and dunk?

Wonder if the enchant would seep under the printed resin?

That would probably work also, just wondering how hard it would be to pop the parts off of the resin afterwards.

[Lemosteam]

Heat.