John Bakker
Plastic
- Joined
- May 12, 2020
I thought I would share my experience of making a brass machine tag using ferric chloride, for my Monarch lathe.
The tag came out great, and is not that difficult to do.
The first and hardest step is to make a mask that is placed on the brass. The mask will prevent etching in that area. I used a decal that I cut on my Silhouette decal cutter. It was a lot of work to remove the unwanted sections of decal that will be the text that get's etched. I tried painters tape on a sample and it works well and could be cut using the inexpensive lazer cutter after the tape has been applied to the brass. There are other masking methods that can be found on line.
The next step is to tape the sides and back of the brass. I used clear packing tape. I then tapped s.m. styrofoam to the back of the brass. The styrofoam floats the brass and provides a good place to pick up the brass for inspection. I then poured some ferric chloride into a plastic container and placed the brass face down in the solution. I kept the solution warm by placing an old barley heating pad under the solution. The brass was etched for 2hrs and 50min. The 0.025" brass sheet was etched 3/4 of the way through. 1 1/2 hrs of etching etched half way through a test sample.
Next neutralize the brass with baking soda and water, remove the decal and it's done.
I polished the surface with a piece of completely worn out Emery cloth.
I used automotive oil resistant silicon gasket maker to attach the tag to the lathe.
My tag has decimal equivalents because I do not have the ability to cut threads. I put this lathe together originally just to have some basic machining ability. It works so good that I thought I should make it look good. At first it was difficult to identify the brand, due to the missing parts, but after some digging, it turns out that it is the 135th model A Monarch made, possibly as early as 1909.
Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
The tag came out great, and is not that difficult to do.
The first and hardest step is to make a mask that is placed on the brass. The mask will prevent etching in that area. I used a decal that I cut on my Silhouette decal cutter. It was a lot of work to remove the unwanted sections of decal that will be the text that get's etched. I tried painters tape on a sample and it works well and could be cut using the inexpensive lazer cutter after the tape has been applied to the brass. There are other masking methods that can be found on line.
The next step is to tape the sides and back of the brass. I used clear packing tape. I then tapped s.m. styrofoam to the back of the brass. The styrofoam floats the brass and provides a good place to pick up the brass for inspection. I then poured some ferric chloride into a plastic container and placed the brass face down in the solution. I kept the solution warm by placing an old barley heating pad under the solution. The brass was etched for 2hrs and 50min. The 0.025" brass sheet was etched 3/4 of the way through. 1 1/2 hrs of etching etched half way through a test sample.
Next neutralize the brass with baking soda and water, remove the decal and it's done.
I polished the surface with a piece of completely worn out Emery cloth.
I used automotive oil resistant silicon gasket maker to attach the tag to the lathe.
My tag has decimal equivalents because I do not have the ability to cut threads. I put this lathe together originally just to have some basic machining ability. It works so good that I thought I should make it look good. At first it was difficult to identify the brand, due to the missing parts, but after some digging, it turns out that it is the 135th model A Monarch made, possibly as early as 1909.
Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
