PC Etchant Agitator

[John PurdyParticipant @johnpurdy78347]

While not exactly model engineering, I cobbled this together after getting tired of standing rocking a tray of etchant while making PC boards. I had, many years ago, made a hot plate to heat the etchant using a surplus glass heating plate from an old photo copier and a light dimmer to control it. While it worked it was finicky to get the temperature anywhere near constant and I still had to manually agitate the etchant tray .
I used the original hot plate unit but replaced the light dimmer with a PID controller/ “J” thermocouple that I had been given and added a old rotisserie motor from our 40 year old kitchen stove that had given up the ghost ( never did use the rotisserie function!). The motor rocks the tray back and forth on a 6 second cycle. The rest was just bits and pieces I had in stock. The only thing bought was the plastic tray from a “dollar store”.
The gaudy colour scheme is only because I had two almost empty spray cans of paint, neither of which I thought would complete the job!
John

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Neat.

[Author]

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