March 2009

Increasing Productivity and Reducing Waste with an Etching/Regeneration System

Since joining PCMI in 1994, regeneration has been a recurrent topic at all of the PCMI meetings. Everybody talks about it, almost all companies worldwide use it, and everybody thinks about it in a different way. It is quite simple to understand the interest in the topic, as it could allow us to etch using the same ferric chloride batch for a long time, without changing working parameters, and its stable quality fulills at least at least 50% of our needs.

The principles of regeneration are simple. Due to the electro reduction process, ferric chloride dissolving metals turn into ferrous chloride. This causes them to lose “energy,” so you need some kind of “energy” to turn it back to ferric chloride, as well as hydrochloric acid and, in some cases water to keep the right density.

Paolo Iellici, Chemical Machining SPA