j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 1 9 9 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 337340

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Chemical etching of aluminium

O. C akr
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dicle University, 21280 Diyarbakir, Turkey

a r t i c l e
Article history:

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Chemical etching is employed as micromachining manufacturing process to produce micron-size components. The process applies a strong chemical etchant solution to remove unwanted part in the workpiece material. It is basically a corrosion-controlled process. Chemical etching process has a long history and accepted one of the important nontraditional machining processes during the last half century. The method is widely applied to machine geometrically complex parts from thin and at of any material. It is also used to reduce weight of the workpiece materials. In this study, aluminium was machined by well-

Received 28 March 2007 Received in revised form 12 July 2007 Accepted 8 August 2007

Keywords: Chemical etching Aluminium Depth of etch Surface quality

known chemical etchant, ferric chloride (FeCl3 ) at different etching temperature. The effects of selected chemical etching parameters on depth of etch and surface nish quality were investigated. It was observed that FeCl3 was very useful chemical etching for aluminium etching. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1.

Introduction

Corrosion damages materials under normal circumstances, but it can be applied as an efcient method for shaping materials that is named etching. The process is also called in different names such as chemical etching (this term will be used in this paper), chemical machining, chemical milling, wet etching, etc. (ASM, 1989; Drozda and Wick, 1989; C akr, 2001). Chemical etching is a nontraditional machining process in which material removal is carried out by using strong chemical solution, called etchant. This is simply the accelerated and controlled corrosion process. The method is recently employed as micromachining process in the production. Chemical etching has a long history back to bc 2500, used to produce jewelry from copper by citric acid in the Ancient Egypt (Harris, 1976). It has been accepted one of the important nontraditional machining method since 1950s. This machining process is widely used to machine thin and at materials producing geometrically complex and dimensionally accurate components. It is also applied to reduce weight of the workpiece materials such as aircraft wings (ASM, 1989; Drozda and

Wick, 1989; C akr, 2001; Harris, 1976; Dini, 1984; McCallion, 1987). Aluminium has a wide engineering application as a material in aircraft, aerospace, automotive industries where weight is probably the most important factor. The rst chemical etchings of aluminium were mainly carried out for decorative purposes. Chemical etching of aluminium was industrially completed by M.C. Sanz from North Aviation Inc. in 1956; he took the US patent (Patent no.: 2,739,047) and named the process chemical milling or in short chem-mill (Sanz, 1956). Later industrial applications have been carried out by other aircraft manufacturers (Snyder and Rosenberg, 1961; Tershin and Howells, 1967; Ashcraft, 1969; Gross, 1986; Ranieri and Patel, 1996; Denns, 1996). Various studies have been reported over chemical etching of aluminium (Win and Mori, 1980; Chattergee and Thomas, 1976; Kape, 1977; Gerlagh and Baeyens, 1975; Chambers, 2000). It has been noticed that the selection of efcient etchant in chemical etching of any material is probably the most important parameter. The effective chemical etchant would produce a higher etch rate and smooth surface nish. It was

E-mail address: ocakir@dicle.edu.tr. 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2007.08.012

338

j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 1 9 9 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 337340

noticed that these studies mainly used alkaline-based chemical solutions, e.g., sodium hydroxide. The application of other etchants has not been investigated such as ferric chloride (FeCl3 ). Therefore, the present study would provide important scientic information about the aluminium etching with FeCl3 . Moreover, these studies have not studied environmental effect of aluminium chemical etching process. Therefore, it is signicant to provide information about the environmentally friendly chemical etching of aluminium process. New etchants have been studied for various engineering materials and FeCl3 turn out the most attractive chemical etchant for most of the engineering materials etching such as steels, aluminium and its alloys, copper and its alloys, etc. It is widely used and became a universal etchant in etching processes. It is cheap and easy to control during etching process as well as various etchant regeneration systems for used FeCl3 solution can be accessible from industrial point of view (Allen, 1986; Allen and Almond, 2004; Tehrani and Imanian, 2004; Allen and Jeffries, 2006). This present paper aimed to study chemical etching of aluminium by using concentration of 1.25 mol FeCl3 at different etching temperatures. The effects of etching parameters on depth of etch and surface roughness have been examined. The importance of the study is the application of FeCl3 in aluminium etching obtaining experimental result and then discusses these results.

Fig. 1 Experimental set-up of aluminium beaker etching.

2.

Experimental procedures

The experimental study of chemical etching of aluminium was carried out in beaker, using immersion etching method. The selected material was EN AW-7075, its chemical composition was given in Table 1. The hardness of the material was 175200 HB. The thickness of specimen was 1 mm and cut at 10 mm 60 mm dimensions. The experimental study of chemical etching is based on two steps, cleaning and etching. The cleaning step consists of removing grease, oil, heavy oxides and other contaminations from the surface of the specimen to be subjected to chemical etching. The reason for such removal of these materials is that these contaminations will interfere with a uniform chemical etching operation from the attack of chemical etchant solution employed. Therefore, the specimens were cleaned in ultrasonic cleaning machine by using Actoclean Pulver powder mixed with distilled water chemical cleaning solution to remove unwanted contaminations from workpiece material. The cleaning process was completed at 30 C for 30 min. For the second step of the chemical etching of aluminium, the selected etchant (FeCl3 ) was prepared at 1.25 mol and poured into beaker that was put into water jacket to control etching temperature. The experimental set-up of beaker etching method was given in Fig. 1.

The selected etching temperatures were 20, 30, 40 and 50 2 C. Double sided etching process was carried out for 20 min in total. Each depth of etch and surface roughness measurements were completed after 5 min intervals. The measurement of depth of etch was carried out by Mitutoyo outside micrometer (deviation was 0.001) and surface roughness measured by Taylor-Hobson Surtronic 3+. The surface measurement lter of this equipment was 2CR type. The cutoff length was taken as the maximum value as 2.5 mm. Stylus type was diamond with 5 m radius. For each experiment, three specimens were chemically etched and three measurements were taken from each specimen.

3.

Experimental results and discussion

The chemical reaction of aluminium (Al) etching with FeCl3 can be written as follows: 3FeCl3 + Al 3FeCl2 + AlCl3 The chemical etching of aluminium with FeCl3 etchant is mainly completed at three steps: a. FeCl3 attacks aluminium; b. Etchant contacts material surface and electron transfer starts; c. Corroded Fe ions and elements of etched materials spread into etchant.

Table 1 Chemical composition of EN AW-7075 aluminium Chemical elements (%) Al

96

Si
0.4

Fe
0.5

Cu
1.22.0

Mn
0.3

Mg
2.12.9

Cr
0.180.28

Zn
5.16.1

Ti
0.2

Others
0.05

j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 1 9 9 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 337340

339

Fig. 2 Examination of depth of etch.

Fig. 4 Surface roughness examination of aluminium etching.

Depth of etch parameter presents an inuence of etching process in the chemical etching of any material. This parameter also gives etch rate value of the chemical etching of aluminium. The depth of etch was examined due to etching time. It was observed that the depth of etch increased with etching process continued (Fig. 2). After 5 min etching, etching process of aluminium produced bubbles in the etchant. During each interval for measurements, some smuts on the etched surface have been observed. Therefore, the smuts on the etched aluminium surface were washed for easy measurements. The inuence of etching temperature on depth of etch was positive, depth of etch increased when higher etching temperature was used. The highest depth of etch obtained at 50 C, lower etching temperatures produced less depth of etch values. This is due to chemical activation of the etchant at high temperature; the etchant becomes more active for etching. These results were shown in Fig. 3. Surface roughness presents the effectiveness of the chemical etching process when it is used for weight reduction purpose. The investigation of surface roughness in the chemical etching of aluminium was carried out and the results were given in Fig. 4. It was observed that surface quality changed

Fig. 5 Effect of etching temperature on surface roughness.

by etching time and etching temperature. Etching time was important; longer etching period produced a constant etching process in case of aluminium etching, because chemical etching was not properly occurred in the rst part of etching process (rst 5 min etching). After this period, the etching of aluminium was more stable. Etching temperature was also an inuential factor on surface nish quality. It was noticed that higher etching temperature generally increases surface roughness. The trend of surface roughness was that higher etching temperature produced poor surface quality (Fig. 5). The lowest surface roughness was obtained at 20 C etching temperature and the highest was at 50 C.

4.

Conclusion

The experimental investigation of chemical etching of EN AW7075 aluminium was completed by using concentration of 1.25 mol FeCl3 etchant at various etching temperatures. The important conclusions were observed as follow: a. FeCl3 is very suitable etchant for aluminium etching. The chemical reaction is simple, that makes the process easy to control. This result is important in case of weight reduction from the workpiece material.

Fig. 3 Effect of etching temperature on depth of etch (after 20 min etching time).

340

j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 1 9 9 ( 2 0 0 8 ) 337340

b. Depth of etch is one of important etching outputs in chemical etching of any material. It was affected by etching time and etching temperature. Longer etching process produced a higher depth of etch. Higher etching temperatures provided higher depth of etch values. c. Surface nish quality was mainly affected by etching temperature. The inuence of etching temperature was not clear, because the best surface quality was obtained at either 40 or 20 C of etching temperature. Other temperatures produced higher surface roughness. It was also observed that etching period should be kept longer to make the etching more stable. d. As a result, high etching temperature should be selected for aiming higher depth of etch and a better surface nish quality. This combination of etching parameters would make the material removal rate higher. This study has also showed further research opportunities in the chemical etching of aluminium such as investigating various etchant concentrations on etching parameters, some chemical additives to main etchant and examining other possible etchants. Moreover, environmentally acceptable aluminium etching process should be investigated including economical regeneration of waste etchant and recovery of etch material.

Acknowledgments
and Assoc. Prof. Author is grateful to Prof. Dr. Tahsin Klc oglu Dr. Hamdi Temel (Dicle University, Diyarbakir) for providing laboratory facilities and scientic help.

references

Allen, D.M., 1986. The Principles and Practice of Photochemical Machining and Photoetching. Adam Hilger/IOP, UK. Allen, D.M., Almond, H.A.J., 2004. Characterisation of aqueous ferric chloride etchants used in industrial photochemical machining. J. Mater. Proc. Tech. 55, 238245.

Allen, D.M., Jeffries, P., 2006. An economic, environment-friendly oxygen-hydrochloric acid regeneration system for ferric chloride etchants used in photochemical machining. CIRP Ann.Manuf. Technol. 55, 205208. Ashcraft, J.A., 1969. Method for etching aluminum, US Patent no.: 3,486,954, 4 pp. ASM, 1989. Metals Handbook. Machining, vol. 16., ninth ed. ASM Int. Pub., pp. 579587. C akr, O., 2001. Chemical machining process. In: Proceedings of II. Machine Material and Prod. Techn. Sym., Manisa, Turkey, pp. 813819 (in Turkish). Chambers, B., 2000. Etching of aluminum alloys by ferric ion. Met. Finish. 98, 2628. Chattergee, B., Thomas, R.W., 1976. Chemical etching of aluminium in caustic soda solutions. Trans. Inst. Met. Finish. 54, 1724. Denns, T.A., 1996. Composition for etching aluminum alloys, US Patent no.: 5,587,103, 9 pp. Dini, J.W., 1984. Fundamentals of chemical milling. American Machinist (Special Report: 768), pp. 13128. Drozda, T.J., Wick, C., 1989. Nontraditional machining. In: Tool and Manufacturing Engineers Handbook. SME Pub (Chapter 14); pp. 1481, 1589. Gerlagh, G., Baeyens, P., 1975. A new etchant for photochemical milling of aluminium. Trans. Inst. Met. Finish. 53, 133137. Gross, D.W., 1986. Chemical milling processes and etchant therefore, US Patent no: 4,588,474, 9 pp. Harris, W.T., 1976. Chemical Machining: The Technology of Cutting Materials by Etching. Clarendon Press. Kape, J.M., 1977. Chemical etching of aluminium in caustic soda based solutions. Trans. Inst. Met. Finish. 55, 4350. McCallion, H., 1987. High production chemical milling. Prod. Eng. 66. Ranieri, R.L., Patel, P., 1996. Aluminum etching, US Patent no.: 5,513,766, 5 pp. Sanz, M.C., 1956. Process of chemically milling structural shapes and resultant article, USA Patent no.: 2,739,047, 4 pp. Snyder, H.B., Rosenberg, L.M., 1961. Chemical milling process and composition, US Patent no.: 2,981,610, 15 pp. Tehrani, A.F., Imanian, E., 2004. A new etchant for the chemical machining of St304. J. Mater. Proc. Tech. 55, 404408. Tershin, J.A., Howells, E., 1967. Chemical milling process and related solutions for aluminum, US Patent no.: 3,300,347, 4 pp. Win, H., Mori, T.J., 1980. Characterization of a mixed acid aluminum etchant. Plat. Surf. Finish. 67, 5356.