First attempt at acid etching brass nameplate (cap badge)
Jun 10, 2022 20:27:43 GMT
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Post by coniston on Jun 10, 2022 20:27:43 GMT
This episode of adventure started a few years ago when I was chatting to a friend at the track one day about nameplates for locos. He mentioned that he made some by acid etching which is a process I knew about for making printed circuit boards and was aware of its use to make nameplates. during discussion it transpired he used a digital vinyl cutter to create the acid resist. Anyway he offered to make me a pair for the Bantam Cock I owned at the time and when he turned up the next week with them I was mightily impressed. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos of them and have since passed the loco on.
Roll on three years and I recently purchased a digital vinyl cutter primarily for making decals and airbrush masks for my model airplanes. The one I purchased is a Silhouette Cameo 4, the manufacturer also has its own free download software which is pretty comprehensive in its own right and can be upgraded to a more professional version at a reasonable cost if necessary to get all the bells and whistles.
One of the first jobs I did was to replicate our club logo in the design software so that I could cut some decals to stick on our passenger trolleys. So having the logo I thought why not try acid etching brass and decided to make some railway cap badges, fortunately as you will see our club logo is in the shape not dissimilar to an engineman's cap badge.
Here is the process I have followed as it may be of interest to others, all I can say is that after a bit of practise I am very pleased with the results. I know there are other ways of creating the acid resist but here I am showing the process using cut vinyl.
First up is to cut the vinyl and I have to say I am impressed with the way the Silhouette Cameo coped with this, the small letters being less than 3mm high.
Next up is to remove all the unwanted bits of vinyl, this process is known as 'weeding' so you end up with just the bits you want. In the photo below I have also covered the vinyl with 'transfer tape' this is a low tack self adhesive clear film that allows the removal of the vinyl backing paper keeping all the pieces in their correct place.
Then the paper backing is removed by peeling back on itself whilst carefully making sure the vinyl sticks to the transfer film.
It is then pressed firmly onto the brass blank using a plastic card scraper to ensure the vinyl is completely stuck to the brass.
before removing the transfer tape again peeling back on itself very carefully and s..l..o..w..l..y
Last thing before etching can start is to protect the rest of the brass you don't want etched i.e. sides and back. For this I use packing tape but electrical insulating tape is also very good for this.
I saw on various YouTube videos that most people suggest hanging the plates upside down in the acid to allow the etched debris to fall away from the plate, I saw this method which I found easy to use. It entails fixing the plate to a piece of closed cell foam that will float in the acid.
The Ferric Chloride acid was easy to obtain from Amazon, or it is also available from ebay and I am sure many other outlets. This is what I used.
It is supposed to be ready for use but again scouring the internet for ideas I found an interesting article that someone had done some tests on etching time vs strength of acid and he concluded the fasted etching was actually done by diluting 50/50 with tap water, and yes he started with the same 42 degrees Baume. I did try an earlier attempt with 100% and can conclude it certainly wasn't any quicker so I followed the advice and diluted 50/50.
So into the acid they went. You have to be careful not to trap any air bubbles against the surface you are etching so I half lifted each of them at an angle in each direction to make sure the surface was coated with the acid and no air bubbles were present.
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I left them in the acid to 60 minutes which from my first attempts seems about right. Too short a time and you don't get the depth and too long you can get the acid starting to etch under the edges of the resist.
After a good rinse off this is hat they look like, the bottom one has had the vinyl removed.
This view shows the depth of etching a bit more clearly, not too much probably only about 5 thou but enough to hold paint.
To make these into cap badges required a bit of hand work with piercing saw and a lick on the linsher
Of course cap badges are curved so a pass through the bending rolls sorted that out
To hold the badge in place I followed the same method on my own cap badge (actually an LBSCR one) so I needed two upstanding eyes silver soldered to the back. I made them from brass split pins opened out to allow a hair pin to pass through.
Then silver soldered them to the back at 48mm centres which I had measured from my cap.
After a bit of a clean up they look like this.
I painted them over with humbrol blue enamel which is the colour of our logo.
Leaving it a few days in the warm had the paint hard enough to sand off with 1500 grade wet and dry used with with a bit of soap to prevent the paint clogging and the brass lettering comes through nice. You will notice I had to touch up the paint a bit as although I used the wet and dry on a hard wood block it did take some paint off the background. I suspect this is due to distortion when bending or silver soldering bringing the background surface level with the lettering. ON a flat nameplate with no fixings silver soldered on I guess this wouldn't happen.
Last thing was to make the brass hairpin to retain the badge in place.
As I said before I am pretty pleased with the end result and it's been a bit of fun trying out some new processes. The real limitation using the cut vinyl method is in how small can the vinyl letters be cut and successfully weeded and transferred to the brass. I think I could go down to maybe 2.5mm high but any smaller I would not be able to weed out the middle of letters like the 'A' or particularly the '&'
Another way of producing the acid resist is to use a laser photocopier or printer and print a mirror copy of the image. This is then heat transferred to the brass for which you can use a domestic iron or even a heat laminator as used for laminating paper into plastic. Unfortunately I tried this but I don't think my laser printer puts enough toner down, it certainly didn't want to stick all of it to the brass so maybe I'll try getting the images professionally copied in a local print shop.
Anyway I hope this may be useful to others contemplating making their own brass name plates.
Chris
Roll on three years and I recently purchased a digital vinyl cutter primarily for making decals and airbrush masks for my model airplanes. The one I purchased is a Silhouette Cameo 4, the manufacturer also has its own free download software which is pretty comprehensive in its own right and can be upgraded to a more professional version at a reasonable cost if necessary to get all the bells and whistles.
One of the first jobs I did was to replicate our club logo in the design software so that I could cut some decals to stick on our passenger trolleys. So having the logo I thought why not try acid etching brass and decided to make some railway cap badges, fortunately as you will see our club logo is in the shape not dissimilar to an engineman's cap badge.
Here is the process I have followed as it may be of interest to others, all I can say is that after a bit of practise I am very pleased with the results. I know there are other ways of creating the acid resist but here I am showing the process using cut vinyl.
First up is to cut the vinyl and I have to say I am impressed with the way the Silhouette Cameo coped with this, the small letters being less than 3mm high.
Next up is to remove all the unwanted bits of vinyl, this process is known as 'weeding' so you end up with just the bits you want. In the photo below I have also covered the vinyl with 'transfer tape' this is a low tack self adhesive clear film that allows the removal of the vinyl backing paper keeping all the pieces in their correct place.
Then the paper backing is removed by peeling back on itself whilst carefully making sure the vinyl sticks to the transfer film.
It is then pressed firmly onto the brass blank using a plastic card scraper to ensure the vinyl is completely stuck to the brass.
before removing the transfer tape again peeling back on itself very carefully and s..l..o..w..l..y
Last thing before etching can start is to protect the rest of the brass you don't want etched i.e. sides and back. For this I use packing tape but electrical insulating tape is also very good for this.
I saw on various YouTube videos that most people suggest hanging the plates upside down in the acid to allow the etched debris to fall away from the plate, I saw this method which I found easy to use. It entails fixing the plate to a piece of closed cell foam that will float in the acid.
The Ferric Chloride acid was easy to obtain from Amazon, or it is also available from ebay and I am sure many other outlets. This is what I used.
It is supposed to be ready for use but again scouring the internet for ideas I found an interesting article that someone had done some tests on etching time vs strength of acid and he concluded the fasted etching was actually done by diluting 50/50 with tap water, and yes he started with the same 42 degrees Baume. I did try an earlier attempt with 100% and can conclude it certainly wasn't any quicker so I followed the advice and diluted 50/50.
So into the acid they went. You have to be careful not to trap any air bubbles against the surface you are etching so I half lifted each of them at an angle in each direction to make sure the surface was coated with the acid and no air bubbles were present.
I left them in the acid to 60 minutes which from my first attempts seems about right. Too short a time and you don't get the depth and too long you can get the acid starting to etch under the edges of the resist.
After a good rinse off this is hat they look like, the bottom one has had the vinyl removed.
This view shows the depth of etching a bit more clearly, not too much probably only about 5 thou but enough to hold paint.
To make these into cap badges required a bit of hand work with piercing saw and a lick on the linsher
Of course cap badges are curved so a pass through the bending rolls sorted that out
To hold the badge in place I followed the same method on my own cap badge (actually an LBSCR one) so I needed two upstanding eyes silver soldered to the back. I made them from brass split pins opened out to allow a hair pin to pass through.
Then silver soldered them to the back at 48mm centres which I had measured from my cap.
After a bit of a clean up they look like this.
I painted them over with humbrol blue enamel which is the colour of our logo.
Leaving it a few days in the warm had the paint hard enough to sand off with 1500 grade wet and dry used with with a bit of soap to prevent the paint clogging and the brass lettering comes through nice. You will notice I had to touch up the paint a bit as although I used the wet and dry on a hard wood block it did take some paint off the background. I suspect this is due to distortion when bending or silver soldering bringing the background surface level with the lettering. ON a flat nameplate with no fixings silver soldered on I guess this wouldn't happen.
Last thing was to make the brass hairpin to retain the badge in place.
As I said before I am pretty pleased with the end result and it's been a bit of fun trying out some new processes. The real limitation using the cut vinyl method is in how small can the vinyl letters be cut and successfully weeded and transferred to the brass. I think I could go down to maybe 2.5mm high but any smaller I would not be able to weed out the middle of letters like the 'A' or particularly the '&'
Another way of producing the acid resist is to use a laser photocopier or printer and print a mirror copy of the image. This is then heat transferred to the brass for which you can use a domestic iron or even a heat laminator as used for laminating paper into plastic. Unfortunately I tried this but I don't think my laser printer puts enough toner down, it certainly didn't want to stick all of it to the brass so maybe I'll try getting the images professionally copied in a local print shop.
Anyway I hope this may be useful to others contemplating making their own brass name plates.
Chris
