A Home Photoetching Operation

Chapter 3
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Tank 4a
Years ago I received a 500-watt titanium cartridge heater in exchange for
some work I did. I thought it might be a nice idea to make a separate,
insulated reservoir for the etchant incorporating the heater, and simplify the
tank itself. The tank would only need a sloped drainage bottom.

I also wanted to bring as much of the pressurized piping as possible inside

the tank wall, where a failure would be contained. At the hardware store, I
discovered a flexible underground sprinkler pipe riser that could be cut to
length, and used two of them to make the internal connections. Only a short
piece of flexible hose remained outside the tank, and it was trapped
between the pump outlet port and a barb fitting in the tank wall, so even if a
hose clamp failed the hose would not slip off the barbs.
I cut the sump out of Tank 4 and fabricated and installed a new, shallow-V-
shaped bottom plate. Unfortunately, that's as far as Tank 4a went. Upon
further thought, the logistics weren't as clear-cut as I had initially thought.
Due to its construction, the heater had to be installed horizontally in the
wall of the reservoir, which meant the reservoir itself was going to be
basically the same size and proportions as the original sump. And there
were actually more tubing connections to be made than in the original
configuration.

I should have kept the sump, but the upshot is that I had effectively trashed
Tank IV.
Tank 5
Tank 5 is basically a redo of Tank 4 incorporating the lessons I had learned
from the earlier tank. The main differences are: seamless bottom plate,
larger titanium heater, motorized rotator for the workpiece, big strainer on
the pump inlet, and an AC junction box with switches for the pump, heater,
and rotator. I reused the pump, nozzles, plumbing, and top cover from Tank
4a. I have a bunch of castors given to me by a co-worker, and made a nice
sturdy rollable stand using PVC pipe.
A rear view of the tank before I installed the rotator. From top to bottom
are the pump with inlet strainer, the cable coming from the heater's
temperature sensor, the clamping plate for the heater. I started out with only
the four side castors, but added the front and back castors when I
discovered the tank could relatively easily tilt fore and aft. If I could have
found 3-way elbows for the corners of the frame, I could have gotten away
with just four castors in the corners. The castors themselves are mounted in
pipe caps, which I drilled out for the threaded shanks of the castors,
installed with large washers to spread the load. The caps are just pressed
into the pipe tees.
The bottom plate is a single piece of 3/8" PVC sheet, which I heat-bent
using a borrowed strip heater on the bottom surface, supplemented by a
hot-air gun on the top surface because of the thickness. I laid out the flat
pattern to locate the bends required for the drainage slopes and sloped sump
bottom in CAD. I pre-cut the wall to shape, made the first bend in the
bottom plate and then used the tank itself as the form to ensure each
subsequent bend was fitted correctly. I glued the bottom plate in place
using Devcon Plastic Welder, a two-part adhesive that includes solvents to
strengthen its bond with plastic. Time will tell whether this is better than
the more conventional PVC cement.
Inside the tank you can see the Cobra Connector flexible hoses, the nozzles,
the workpiece-holding "spider", the titanium heater (both metal tubular
shapes), the gray PVC tube holding the heater's temperature sensor, and the
inlet to the pump.

The temperature sensor along with its cable, is in a heat-sealed Teflon

sleeve (it came that way). I threaded the sleeve through the 1/4" PVC tube,
and then heat-bent the tube around it. I glued the tube into the tank wall
well above the sump's liquid level.

I mounted the nozzles in tees with threaded reducing bushings. I bored out
the opposite end of the tees, and fastened them to the wall using end plugs
placed through holes I drilled in the walls, all well-glued with PVC pipe
cement.

The Cobra Connectors come in large length increments, but can be cut
down to the exact length you need. Pull the blue housing back from the
connector enough to expose the inner PVC tubing, pull the end bushing out
of the inner tubing, shorten the sleeve and tubing by the same length, and
reassemble.
I fitted a new, larger-capacity strainer to the pump. The strainer came with
a stainless-steel screen, which I replaced with a polypropylene screen
which I cut to size and welded the ends together into a loop by melting with
a soldering iron. There is just enough tubing to lead from the pump outlet
to the barb fitting (which I machined from PVC rod) in the tank wall, and
the tubing is secured with stainless steel hose clamps. The pump itself is
mounted on standoffs I machined from more PVC rod and glued onto the
tank wall.
I machined a scrap of the 3/8" PVC plate into a "saddle" fitting the tank
wall, also machined a cutout for the heater to pass through, and glued it
well in place. After the glue was set, I continued the hole through the tank
wall using holesaws and hand files. Another scrap provided the clamping
plate, and four lengths of all-thread screw into the saddle but not through
the tank wall. The gasket is a piece of silicone rubber sheet.

The rotator is a 115VAC, 3 rpm gearmotor, mounted on yet more 3/8" PVC
(I had to buy a whole sheet of it, so I'm using it for everything I can!) It
 drives the spider shaft through a random pair of timing belt pulleys and a
short belt. The motor pulley is set-screwed in place, but the driven pulley is
not fastened to the spider shaft. I found some kind of rubber bushing or seal
or boot in my random-parts box and superglued it to the driven pulley. The
shaft is a push fit in the rubber piece, and I can slide the shaft through the
rubber to center the workpiece between the nozzles. There is plenty enough
friction to reliably drive the spider. Just under the spider feed-through you
can see the head of the pipe plug which holds the nozzle tee in place inside
the tank. The splash shield for the rotator is a piece of the thin-wall PVC
pipe I had bought for the Tank 4a remote sump, which I cut, softened using
the heat gun, and hand-formed around a form I made from some 2x4's
glued together and bandsawed to shape.
The control panel and heater controller are mounted on another cutoff of
the 3/8" PVC. I provided switches for the pump, heater and rotator. The
mounting plate has an overhang to prevent any etchant drips from falling
on the electrical parts. The sleeved, gray cable at the upper left is for the
temperature sensor, which is hard-wired to the controller. The pump and
heater plug into a regular wall socket, and I hard-wired the rotator cable
(which just passes through a rubber bushing in the junction box wall) to its
switch.
Components
Links verified and updated 2 Jan 2012.

• Flowjet inlet strainers

I used the 01740-012, but the 01720-112 has a polypropylene
screen already.
• Cobra Connector
The flexible tubing I used inside Tank 5.
• Devcon Plastic Welder
The adhesive I used to fabricate Tank 5.
• CLEPCO heaters (This is an "orphan page" and not linked from
CLEPCO's homepage.)
My heater is a QDTY5 500-watt titanium heater with digital
control. CLEPCO may not make this model any more.
• Gearmotor - Go to McMaster-Carr's website and search on 3867K7.
The Crouzet 3 rpm AC gearmotor for rotating the spider.

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This article is ©2009-12 Randy Gordon-Gilmore. Last updated 2 Jan 2012.