What is acid etching?

Do you know what is acid etching? Read this article and find out the meaning of this term and also improve your knowledge which will help you somehow in future. It is actually a process that is used to cut into another substance by using a strong acid. It is used by industries as well as for artistic purposes.

Etching used for variety of purposes including the preparation of flooring like cement for painting or refinishing. On the other hand, artists use acid etching to create fine pictures on glass or metal. In order to prepare flooring with epoxy paint, acid etching is used with chemicals like muriatic acid, sulfamic acid, or phosphoric acid. Since floor should be cleaned off perfectly, the acid is concentrated with other acids which is very dangerous and so one should use it with extreme caution. The acid is made of liquid solution that is applied on floors through brush and then cleaned off to apply pain over the floor, the next step. This process of cleaning and applying paint is typically used by home owners in order to finish and protect the flooring in basements, garages and shops.

There is one process which is called artistic metal acid etching where a metal sheet is covered with wax-like substance named as ground. Artists use precision tools for creating designs over wax. Once the design is done, the metal sheet is then dipped into acid to remove the flaws present in metal like covering the areas where the metal is left exposed. After etching, the ground is then cleaned off. The etching can also be used with ink to generate similar paper images that are commonly seen through printing press.

The same acid etching process can be used to form glass etching which is covered with wax or some sticky substance to preserve the natural cover of the glass. The glass is similarly dipped into hydrofluoric acid bath to make the etched image visible. However, this process is very dangerous and so a craft fanatic must choose a safer etching cream for home project. Once the process is done, a stencil is used to remove the etching cream that forms cloudy pattern on glass.

There is one more thing that acid etching does, photo acid etching, an offshoot of metal etching. Here, in spite of using a ground, the artist prints an image on special paper to generate a photo resist that is placed on metal on the next step. After that, the sheet is exposed to light so that the image can be finely placed onto the metal. After that, the sheet is dipped into acid followed with the image to be etched into metal.