We want to express our condolences to the family of Conard’s founder, Richard C. Huttinger, who recently passed.

Dick developed the process for etching aluminum that is still a mainstay of the company’s capabilities forty-five years later.  The Conard process yields industry-leading results in etching aluminum…to the point that other etchers will come to us for it.

We offer prayers and sympathy to Dick’s family.

Labor is a significant factor in the cost of photo etched metal parts.  And, the “sheet” is the unit of labor.  The amount of labor per sheet is nearly the same whether the sheet is 6″ x 6″ or 18″ x 24″.

The goal, therefore, is to make the sheet as large as possible and put as many parts as possible on the sheet.

Dimensional tolerances are a major determinant of the sheet size we can use.  At a minimum, dimensional tolerances should be at least 15% of the metal thickness.

However, designing with tolerances that are close to the limits of the  process adds to cost.  Here’s an example: assume a 1.000-inch disk in .010 stainless.

The typical tolerance for a three-place decimal is +/-.005″, which is about the thickness of a sheet of paper.  On .010 material, in photo etching, the achievable tolerance would be +/-.0015″.

So, just because the process allows tighter tolerances …don’t jump there.  Here’s why:

At +/-.005″, we can make about 400 pieces of our 1-inch disk per sheet.  At +/-.0015″, we make only about 100 pieces per sheet (due to smaller sheets and more of them) . Excluding material cost, producing to +/-.0015″ costs nearly 60% more per part than to the standard tolerance.

To help us help you, please be as generous with dimensional tolerances as your application can accommodate.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

Photo etching is part of a spectrum of metal fabricating processes that include stamping, blanking, CNC punching, laser cutting and wire EDM.

Etching is particularly suited to very thin gauge metals, routinely to .001″, that are less easily handled by other methods.  Alloys, including aluminum and copper, that are not readily processed by lasers are routinely processed by etching.

Although not as fast as stamping or blanking, etching handles complex geometries and multiplicities of holes far more efficiently than punching, laser or EDM.  In etching, all of the features happen simultaneously even though it might be a few minutes for the process to work.

Very fine details and very small holes are possible in etching.  The minimum limits of feature and hole size are determined by the metal thickness.  Holes must be at least 110% of the metal thickness and minimum metal features must be at least equal to the metal thickness.

Tooling is very inexpensive, generally less than $300, and can be produced in 24 hours.  Quantities can run from a few to tens of thousands.  We routinely work with projects that are destined for stamping, and we may produce 100,000 parts before the conversion.

For more details on the capabilities of photo etching, please contact us.

If you are still photo etching precision metal parts in house for your own account (not as a job shop), we should talk.

Imagine your life (and business) without all that etching hassle.  Look at what you would save in utilities, water, waste disposal, chemistry and supplies, maintenance and repair, regulatory compliance, and ask yourself why you’re still doing this if it’s not the business you are really in.

We are in the etching business all day, every day– it’s the only business we’re in.

We know what it takes to run a safe, efficient, clean and cost-effective etching facility.  We invest continuously in maintaining and upgrading our equipment and facilities.  We have process controls and automated regeneration to insure consistent quality.  We have state of the art waste treatment and handling that complies with the most demanding standards in the industry.

We know that we can meet your quality and service expectations.  And, I think you’ll find that letting us do it for you is a compelling value proposition as well.  So, call me.  Let’s talk.

In an effort to further engage our website visitors, we installed live chat software as a hosted application.  We typically get 60-90 visitors  per day. In six months, we have had two chat requests.  And, I learned early on that sending a chat invite to a visitor absolutely scares them away.  But, the real value of the software is in being able to see what your visitors are looking for in real time.

If you are using Google Adwords, you can see the exact search phrases  that are being clicked.  Unless you are much more sophisticated than I was about the generosity of Google’s “broad matching” parameters, you might be shocked at how many of your clicks are wasted.  As a result of this somewhat costly education, we tuned up the negative keywords list significantly and changed most of the keywords to a “must contain” match.  The net result has been that we’re getting the same amount of traffic, but it’s much more relevant.

We can also see where our visitors are from geographically, and in many cases, we can identify the organization.  I’ve had a number of cases of seeing a visitor from a company where I know some one.  And, I’ve sent emails that say “we had a web visitor from your shop.  If some one is looking for etching, we hope you’ll keep us in mind.”

Being able to see the daily traffic live also gives you a sense of what the hot search topics are.  We use it to expand site content, modify the keyword list and suggest topics for newsletters  (and the blog.)

And, sometimes, people want to chat.

Photo chemical etching, chemical milling and electro chemical etching are cousins.  In all cases, an etchant is used to remove metal.  But, the intent of each process is different.

Photo etching is a fabrication process that yields either finished parts or flat blanks that require additional steps to complete.   Photo etching is not a special process as defined by NADCAP.  Photo etching does not in any way alter the physical,  mechanical or chemical properties of the alloys we process.

Chemical milling is used to selectively remove metal either from a prefabricated part or to re-gauge a sheet of metal.  It is most often used for aerospace components, such as engine nacelles and some airframe structures, to remove non-structural metal in order to reduce the weight of the part.  Chemical milling to reduce the thickness of metal sheets is an alternative to grinding.  Chemical milling, depending on the application, may be subject to the NADCAP 7108/2 checklist.

Electro chemical etching is a process for marking parts with part numbers, serial numbers, logos, CAGE codes, lot codes and the like.   Electro chemical etching can be applied to many alloys and to curved surfaces.  Although specifications for electro chemical etching still appear on many legacy drawings,  laser marking has become a popular alternative.

Links to providers of chemical milling, electrochemical etching and part marking can be found here.

A concise list of NADCAP special processes can be found at this link.

I’m Kathy Stillman,  Director of Sales and Marketing for Conard (and Queen of All She Surveys…at least in my own mind).  If you are looking for the top blogs to follow, try here .   If you have a streak of geek and some curiosity about things we can do with metal and acid, this might be the place.

You do what?

When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them, “I sell shiny metal parts.”  The usual reaction is the scrunch-faced forward-leaning  “huh?”

And then I say that I work for a specialty metal fabricator that does photo etching, which doesn’t usually help  the situation.  “Well, what do you make?” is often the next question.  My answer: “everything from satellite components to Christmas tree ornaments.”  At this point, some people think that I’m trying to mess with them, and it can get a little tense.

But, seriously, folks: it’s true.  We do make satellite components and ornaments and bookmarks and jewelry and  components for cell phones and MRI scanners and ball bearings and pipeline sensors and MEMS (a whole ‘nother discussion) and semiconductors and RF and microwave stuff and telescopes and airplanes and diagnostic equipment and model railroads and mass spectrometers and smoke detectors and coffee makers and supercomputers and elevators and fuel cells and electronic components and stenography machines and relays and de-icing boots and, and, and….. You see my problem?

If I worked for Hershey’s Chocolate, things would be easier to explain.  (Although, I would probably want to choose my words carefully and not just blurt out “I sell Kisses…”)

In the course of a year, we’ll run 3000-some jobs through our plant in Glastonbury, for several hundred different customers.  Some of the parts are so tiny that 40,000 of them can be made from one square foot of metal and other individual parts are up to 24″ x 66″.  And everything in between.

On any given day, I might talk to a jewelry designer, a mechanical engineer, an architect, a physicist, and a guy who designs stuff for model railroading….among others.

That’s the thing with photo etching.  It has so darned many uses that it can’t be easily categorized.  So, if you have questions, just ask.