TECH: Homemade BRASS TIMING TAGS!!!!!!!

Wanna make one for your car?

 

This is a great tech article. Thanks for taking the time and the great photos.

 

That's killer. I have to give that a try. Do you know if you can do the same thing on aluminum sheet to repop firewall tags made from aluminum?

 

NOT WITH THIS CHEMICAL! I tried it and there is a very violent chemical reaction.

 

There's got to be some chemical that would work on aluminum, anybody know what it is?

 

The same acid should work, just dilute it down to a lower strength, probably require some test strips. Honestly something like eagle one etching wheel cleaner is probably strong enough, but it has soap additives that might cause creep problems under the masking.

 

WOW! The best tech thread EVER right here!!!! Little details like this are really what makes a build great! Very excited to try this!! Thank you for taking the time to do this!!

 

so how is the rest of desorta coming kirk!

 

really cool tech! really great to see some people feel a decent camara and figuring out how to use it really pays off.

 

Kirk,
Thanks for taking the time to do this procedure!!!!
Skot

 

It's totally on hold. I have zero time during the summer because of my travel.

 

i knew that but i had to ask

 

Winter is work time.

 

It may be worth trying, but when I tried it full-strength it boiled like crazy and got so hot I thought it was going to melt the plastic bowl. Plus the fumes were WAY worse!

 

He knows how to wield a camera, he can make timing tags AAAAAND... iron! Holy crap Kirk, yer just all that and a bag of chips!!! Thanks for the tech.

 

Reminds me of when I was about 10, and my dad taught me how to etch circuit boards.

Now I gotta come up with a cool font and put tags on all my stuff! HAHA Drill presses, welders, antique lamps................ the possibilities are endless!

 

Nice Kirk,
I Like It. It's Fun stuff.
I did a very similar things for some of the car club guys that raced a Bonneville this year. I'm going to go back and make a similar tag to stamp like you did.

BYC

 

Sodium Hydroxide (lye, or caustic soda, draino crystals) etches aluminum like crazy. If you water it down a lot, you might get a nice controlled etch. Aluminum is weird to etch because it has a very thin "native oxide" of aluminum oxide on the surface, and aluminum oxide is very tough to etch through. So when you start etching, it may seem for a while like nothing is happening at all, then suddenly it will start to fizz and etch fast as the etch works its way through pinholes in the native oxide. I'm not sure if that iron-on transfer stuff can hold up to sodium hydroxide, but if it does, it would be great.

Potassium Hydroxide will etch aluminum too (Caustic Potash). I think the old spray on oven cleaners used to have potassium hydroxide in them too, but they may have changed to something else.

Both sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are bases (alkaline). They will etch your skin and your eyes. If you get some on your skin, your skin will feel "slimy", and that sliminess is your skin dissolving. So be careful and wear gloves and eye protection.

Most acids will attack aluminum too, but the native oxide will slow the etch down for a while at first. Phosphoric acid, hydrochloric acid, etc. will etch it pretty quickly once the bare aluminum is exposed. Try a watered down mixture to have more control. Even the small amount of phosphoric acid and citric acid in Pepsi or Coke would eat right through aluminum cans if they didn't coat the insides of the cans with a special coating.

Good luck!

 

Back to the top for TECH week.

 

and there's a quick and "dirty" method for aging brass to get that "patina" so sought after.... dunk the piece in pee. really.... we used to "age" our brass buttons, buckles, etc like this in Civil War reenactor groups. just wash it real good afterwards....

 

For Aluminum use Copper sulfate .. the root killer stuff you find at the hardware store. I think I put about a cup of it in a gallon of water and one teaspoon of salt. It etches fast, you will see lots of bubbles...
It nice because it won't burn ya..
Here is a link the info is at the bottom..
http://homepage.usask.ca/~nis715/electro.html
Jdee
PS: like RustyBolts says you do need to wipe the aluminum down just before its bath
with some metal prep to get the native oxide off.

 

Superb post .

 

Man thank you for all your hard work on this! Unbelievably well documented!

 

Another approach...might be slightly lower buck:

http://hackaday.com/2008/07/28/how-to-etch-a-single-sided-pcb/

This is for creating a printed circuit board, but the principle is the same.

 

kirk any pic of you ironing with your B. SOMMERSl shades ...

 

Big thanks Kirk. I'll be heading to Radio Shack Tuesday!

 

Most excellent post Kirk. What kind of wood is that?

 

Tree wood.

 

HAha Fuggin laughed out loud! Thanks for posting the how-to, even I should be able to finger it out.

 

Does anyone know what happened to all of the photos from this post? Great tech article, thanks! I'm gonna try to make new pump panel and dashboard switch tags for my fire truck.

Damon