I store all chemicals in prytex dishes. I can heat the solvent if I need to, when it's cold in the garage, or when the ferric chloride starts to get a little muddy. I find heating the ferric chloride really helps expedite the etching process as well. Also, photography tweezers are useful, and gloves are absolutely required. The chemicals can burn the skin, and the ferric chloride turns everything very yellow.
A quick check to see how the copper etching is coming along. This will require another 15 minutes or so. An agitator would be useful as well, but I haven't one of those yet. I've seen people build them out of disused CDR drives, but I'll pick up a true agitator at a surplus store one day.
A bath in water between each chemical process. This removes harmful chemicals and prevents the etch process for the previous stage.
Finger nail polish remover works, but I like Goo Gone the best as it's basically just pure acetone. A generous wipe of this stuff cleans off all the photo resist.
A dip in liquid tin will make the copper look silvery. This will also help prevent any corrosion which might occur over time. For example, I don't have any plans on using the two small voltage regulator boards right away, so it doesn't hurt to protect them from the elements while they are shelved.
Most of the copper was etched away. All that remains is the copper traces.
Just look at how close those traces are, and how nice they came out. Printing the transparency sheets with monochrome printer preferences makes a huge difference. Otherwise a printer will create black simply mixing the other colors together. This uses up more ink and makes people buy more cartridges, which is good business if you're a printer company.
Time for a coat of solder flux, and then on to solder components into place.
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