Hi. A lot of people have wanted me to do a video on etching your own Pcbs and maybe I'll do that one day because I used to do that a lot. I used to make a lot of my own boards, both personally and actually professionally back in the day, back when they cost a fortune or when you needed them, like really quickly. Within an hour or two, you just have to spin a board so you just etch it uh, and expose it, etch it yourself.

Using various techniques, I used to use the positive uh, pre-sensitized photo resist pcbs and then a photo copy onto a transparency overlay and I used to do really decent bores. It was easily down to eighth hour, eighth hour double-sided I could churn them around in an hour or two. No worries whatsoever. And uh, traditionally, you would, um, etch these using ferric chloride.

and uh, Mrs. E V Blog's actually a geochemist. She's done research on water quality and water pollution and you know all sorts of stuff and she's worked in the industry, so we're talking about the other day and we got to discuss discussing ferric chloride, which is one of the etchant materials used to remove the copper strip the copper from the Pcb. There's better ones these days, but ferric chloride is your traditional method.

It's been used for I don't know 100 years or something. Then I remembered that they actually put ferric chloride into the drinking water and Mrs. Evlog confirmed this. And sure enough, New South Wales Government Department drinking water.

Ferric Chloride. What chemicals are used? The chemicals are used? as part of the filtration treatment process, such as illume and ferric chloride are reduced to very low levels before leaving the treatment plant. Very low levels, but they're actually not zero. And if you go to this, this is a Us American Chemistry thing, or something Ferric chloride uses in the United States Wastewater treatment.

60 Drinking Water Treatment: So 20 percent of ferric chloride in the Us is used to actually treat drinking water. So the reason they use ferric chloride is because it's actually what's called a flocculate, which helps, uh, bind. It's a binding agent that helps bind all the dirt and crap. And you know, other stuff in the water.

So then it's it's larger and then it can be more easily physically filtered out. But some of that ferric chloride gets through into your drinking water. But they actually have health limits for how much you know ferric chloride can actually be in the drinking water. It's fascinating.

and there's emergency. Do Not consume, Do Not Use concentrations for ferric chloride in drinking water. All that sort of stuff. So there is ferric chloride in your water.

So that got me thinking, can you actually use water to etch your Pcbs? I know, it's ridiculously diluted. I couldn't. Really. There's water analysis stuff here for Sydney Water.

This is my local water, which comes from the local reservoir. Ferric Chlorides, also known as iron Chloride. It's the same thing, iron ferrite, so I thought, can we actually maybe use the water to etch Pcbs. Now obviously it's going to be ridiculously diluted, but if we can somehow concentrate the water, maybe it's possible.

So there you go and there's drinking water uh, reports as well. You can get these for your local reservoir and you know they've got all sorts of stuff in them. And there's residual amounts of iron and chloride and all the stuff. So I thought we'd give it a go and this may completely become a guts.

It may not work at all, in which case, you probably won't see this video or on the second channel. Anyway, let's have a go. All right. So let's try and etch a Pcb here.

Please excuse the cruddy of the model. I didn't have time to build it, to scale or to paint it, and I don't have any of my Pcb manufacturing equipment anymore. I used to do this all the time donkeys years ago, but now it's just. it's just cheaper and and much higher quality to just get the boards uh, manufactured outside.

But of course, making your own piece of bees is still a thing if you need it, like within an hour. So I'm going to do it today with a bit of Variborg because I don't have any positive photo resist so a veri board will work fine. Just a little pro tip on. You can see how it's oxidized on one side, copper, etches very poorly.

When it's oxidized like that, it's actually a a resistant coating in its own right. So I've just used some steel wool to, uh, just expose some of that and what I'm going to do. You can actually get special Pcb waterproof, uh, permanent markers to actually make boards. And you can actually make boards.

Just draw them. But a sharpie works. uh, works just fine. So what I'm going to do is just cover every second trace in there like that.

So we'll etch every alternate trace that will act as a photo resist that you'd normally get on a normal board. I just got a glass here. I'm just going to use, uh, tap water, but of course, the concentrations of the ferric chloride that coming out of your tap are ridiculously small. They meet health standards and everything else, so we're going to have to actually attempt to concentrate that if we've got any hope of actually etching this board.

So what I'm going to do is because it's a ferric chloride. it's iron, and we should be able to maybe concentrate it with magnets. So I've got these ridiculously strong magnets, so I'll just get one of these and I'll whack it under the glass. and what I'll do is, I'll just, uh, fill the that in the center.

I'll fill the glass up and just leave the tap running for like five minutes or something. Yeah, it's a waste of water, but so it'll bubble and like it'll spill out over the side. But then hopefully we'll end up with a concentrated, a more more concentrated solution in the bottom. So I'm going to give that a go.

Is that? yeah, it's not going to topple, so I'll leave that running for five minutes. Where are we get that around there? There you go, Hopefully end up with a more concentrated solution and then we'll see if we can. etch. this or not, will it work? No idea.

It's worth a shot. Let's go. I'll come back. I just five minutes.

I have no idea like I have no feel for any of this. so please. the uh, keep the magnet there just in case so we can't use that much water of course. So we're gonna have to try not to steal a bit less.

I think that'll do it. I think that might do it. Um yeah, I've got no real feel for how like how concentrated this is going to be after five minutes we might need a heck of a lot more than that. But anyway, the idea now is that what I'm going to do is, I'm going to, uh, heat up.

Um, this and I'm going to. Well, I'm going to put it to uh, well, I've got it set to 75 because, um, etching. This is like a long time thing like etching Pcbs and stuff. You've always done it at a higher temperature.

It just speeds up the process of doing that. So hopefully that's the idea. Let's get this bed here and we'll leave it running. We might have to leave this running.

I don't know. It could be many, many hours. It may not simply work at all. I, I just don't know.

Um, it depends on the concentration of the water. So if you've got any like uh, feel for how long and like in you know, chemistry knowledge and how long it's uh, it's going to take to concentrate the ferric chloride in the water, then please let us know because you know we need we need a feel for how long it's going to take. but I I like in theory this is possible. so we'll give it a go anyway.

So let's get our glass and uh, we'll whack it on there. All right. And can we see that? is that covering? Yeah, that's covering all that all right. So whack that on there and give it a go.

All right, 75 degrees celsius And like ordinarily you've got to continually agitate uh, the board in there so I don't have one of those like things that you put in your fish tank to bubble itch and you know, do all that sort of stuff. I used to do that back in the day, but as I said, don't have any of my gear anymore so we'll give it a go. Um, I'll probably come back like periodically to like give it a stir or whatever. but I can't stand here for like however long it's going to take to try and get this working.

But anyway, hopefully you can see that. Give that a go. All right, I'll get back to you. I'll go the old time lapse.

Oh hello, I see bubbles. No, it's not on the bottom of the glass, that's there. that's I think that could be in the bottom of the glass. Interesting.

let's I can see. I'm not sure if you can see that, but I can see some bubbles forming on the surface there. Just, I don't know. Too early to tell.

Okay, 15 minutes. Oh more bubblies? Tiny. There's some bubbles on the surface, but there's nothing. Nothing amazing happening yet.

This may or may not work at all. It's just an experiment, but I can definitely see some bubbles on there. From my, uh, piece of etching experience, that means it's doing something. Maybe on this side here, I can see some being etched away.

It's certainly it would have been done by now. Like if this was ferric chloride. This would be done in five or ten minutes. tops.

Five minutes. I think mine used to etch in at an elevated uh temperature with you know the right concentration and with the ferric chloride. So keep going. Hey, what are we up to 25 minutes? Oh hello Hello Mr.

Bubbles. Still, I still think some of this side here is, maybe it wasn't Maybe it's my imagination, more time required to tell, but there's definitely bubbles like forming on the surface there, but I can't see any major bits being eaten away yet. Kind of kind of sorta. but no more time if it is doing anything.

It's incredibly dilute, but that's what I expected. Okay, 35 minutes. Now that's it's. getting long, but I didn't expect anything better if this thing worked at all.

Oh hello, you can see this. Let me show you. I think this is doing something, but I think I may not have polished the board good enough. Let's have a look down there.

you can see some of it has sort of like there's probably might is. there's still like some oxide coating on there or something, but you can see there's some of those traces. I think they're starting to be etched away, so there's something in that. Let's keep it going.

Oh yeah, 45 minutes in and that is working. A treat. Let me show you. Oh yeah, look at that.

I have to get the right light there. Really see that being etched away now? Nice. haha. This works.

Love it. Look at this. Almost an hour later, There ain't much copper left on those traces. The big bulk one down the bottom.

Of course. that's going to take longer to etch away because it typically etches from like the outside inwards. And so that's a larger amount of copper. So you'd expect that, and you see that on typical etching.

But this works. It actually works. Concentrate. I mean, it's very dilute.

We're almost an hour now. This would have been done in five minutes with a proper concentrated ferric chloride. But if you try and concentrate it in this case, using the magnet from, there's probably better ways to do it. Then you can actually etch your Pcbs with water.

That is brilliant. I don't necessarily recommend it, but it does actually work. This is great. I'll leave it for a few more minutes.

Okay, that's one hour and I think we can call it quits there. I'll show you. In fact, let me. uh, let me wash it.

I'll show you up close. not that there's going to be much on there. It's not exactly, uh, concentrated. but let's have a look there.

You have it. most of the cop etched away. I mean, there's still some here. As I said it, etches from the outside inwards.

There's a few little dags left on those traces down there. more towards the top. Get my steel wool, rub off the sharpie, and bingo there is our Pcb. Winner winner chicken dinner etched with water.

Well, not just water. I mean, it needs to be concentrated. There's no way that this is going to work. Uh, just by like filling up a glass like that with water and just doing it.

You could try it. But I think and the magnet seems to have done the trick. Maybe if we left it longer it would have been more concentrated? I don't know. Um, give it a go yourself and and see how it goes.

Let us know, uh, the results in the comments down below. But yeah, I I've had reasonable results with that. As I said before, I would not recommend that as a practical method that took almost an hour compared to like five or ten minutes tops that you'd get with a concentrated ferric, chloride or other solution. But any experienced chemists out there let us know there's some other better method to try and concentrate the uh, ferric or iron chloride in the water.

Please let us know. But that's fantastic, so I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. And as always, discuss down below, catch you next time you.