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not necessarily tape, but that sticky paper stuff... i was thinking about drawing a design on it, sticking it to the enclosure, then cutting out pieces with an x-acto knife. would that work? i'd be worried about etchant getting underneath the edges of the stencil though...


... or could i just paint over the stencil, then etch it and sand the paint off? paint resists etchant, doesn't it?

if it fails then just do the negative by hand, then paint. then peel the mask off and etch. Its not so much what the sticker is made out of paper, vinyl, polypropalene etc. its the GLUE on the sticker that needs to be etch resistant since the glue is touching metal.

eatyourguitar wrote:if it fails then just do the negative by hand, then paint. then peel the mask off and etch. Its not so much what the sticker is made out of paper, vinyl, polypropalene etc. its the GLUE on the sticker that needs to be etch resistant since the glue is touching metal.

yeah, i wasn't sure if the glue would get eaten by the etchant and lift off around the edges to make it look messy.

so paint would definitely work?

I used blue painter's tape to mask an enclosure for etching once. If you apply the acid woth a Q-Tip or dropper, rather than dunk it in acid face down, it works nicely.

I've also used painter's tape to mask off an etch area. I find that the edges of the mask need to be hit with some Sharpie ink to help keep it from encroaching through the edge. Seems to work pretty good, even with a full-face dunk.