I wondered for a while about the title of this post, because I have actually learned very little in terms of safety. After all this, I know I’m still not going to use a fume hood, I’m still going to do this in my garage (albeit closer to the door), and I still won’t wear [...]
The tutorials use hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide as the starting etchant not because they aren’t adventurous but because that is what works best (as opposed to using electrolysis). The starting etchant (hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide) Once again, the starting etchant provides chlorine that will oxidize copper to form cupric chloride: Hydrochloric acid is [...]
tl;dr: You cannot produce an effective cupric chloride etchant using only salt, copper, and electricity. Yet I spent a week trying to do just that. Essentially, I wanted an effective etchant-producing method that didn’t require buying anything out of the ordinary. I mean, all the right elements were there (i.e., chlorine and copper). Unfortunately, other [...]