Enclosure etching using vinyl masks

[Sensei Tim]

So I broke down and convinced the wife that "we" needed a cricut die cutter lol

Cricut and silhouette seem to be the big two brands. The cricut explore Eric's seems to get better reviews overall.  My gripe is that you have to use their design software, which is cloud based.  You can upload your own gfx, but they need to be in svg format.. They say you can upload jpgs and pngs and dxfs and such, but I haven't had much luck... But I've only been mucking around with this for less than 2 weeks.

Importing a design from Inkscape doesn't usually end well and I found it better to just start from scratch.

First off, you'll need to experiment a bit with the cutting force. Also, you'll need to pay attention to fonts. Smallish fronts will have some issues with cutting really fine details, or the middle parts of letters like e, P, O, etc.. If it's a fine detail that is surrounded by lots of vinyl there's no problem. I cut out 1/8" circles for marking drill points with no problem.

On to the important stuff!





The mask took about 2 or 3 minutes to cut.  Transferring to transfer tape and applying the vinyl to the enclosure probably another 2 minutes.  Let's say it took longer for the nail polish to dry around the perimeter of the vinyl than it took to print and apply the mask.

This was a 20 min etch in warm ferric.  I think I could have stopped at 15 min and masked off the text and continued with the graphic for another 10 min... I got a bit too much bleed through on some of the letters.

Toner transfer has its place, but I think this will be my main method of generating etch masks from now on!

[texasfuzz]

Hi Tim,

That looks nice man!

I had the same initial gripe as you with the cloud based software, but for the simplicity of the process I've decided I'll deal with it. (BTW, I didn't quite catch if you chose the Silohuette or the Cricut - I've been using the Cricut Explore One).

A few things I have learned so far after making around 6 or 7 etches is that font choice makes a big difference.  On smaller lettering you can forget about the insides of the letter p, b, etc., showing up.  As a manual fix though - before etching, you could dab some polish or whatever you like inside the small letters as a pre-etch clean up and it would probably work.

I have done all my designs using Gimp and I just export as .PNG - I haven't had any issues when uploading in their cloud based software so far.  

As far as prepping the perimeter of the mask, I have been using basic masking tape and haven't had any issues at all with the ferric bleeding under it.  It should save time over nail polish if you want to try it.

You can see in this one how the insides of some of my letters weren't masked - but I'm fine with that.  Like you I have been using warm ferric for around 15 minutes.