Chris333 is the master of this and actually taught me to do it.
But what I was trying to do wasn't a one-off for a custom build like he was doing, I was trying to make multiple parts for my kits.
While I actually made some usable parts, overall, it was one of the most hazardous and toxic exercises I've ever done with ferric chloride. I greatly improved the etch rate and consistency by dumping the bubbler concept and using an all-plastic propeller circulated I made out of Knex. With that, quality was OK. The bubbler was MUCH slower and there was etch variation all over. And, ferric chrloride is so bad that it ate the rubber tubes off the bubbler and even embrittled the plastic Knex over time.
What wasn't OK was an all-day process to make one 2x3 inch piece of material. That plus the mess it made, suiting myself up with a respirator, gloves, goggles, hazmat suit, putting in custom lighting that doesn't mess with the photoetch, and building a ventilator box for the etch tank... in the end, I went to a custom etch service instead that makes me 50 at a time of whatever I want and it's way better quality than I could ever make - just outstanding. I ended up selling my entire rig I'd developed.
If you want to do one or two of something, and don't mind the mess and learning curve, have at it, but that still ranks as the one modeling process I actually mastered that I swore I'd never do again, right up there with putting a roof on a (real) house in July.
