Electroetching some cranks

[James_CX]

I thought the polished Veloce Ultratorque cranks on my Bianchi looked a bit plain so I decided to try electroetching a design on them. First up was to draw the Campagnolo logo in Illustrator and cut it out in vinyl masking material using my Cricut machine. I always cut a couple of spares!

 

[James_CX]

Next up was to stick the masks onto the cranks. These were already polished back to bare aluminium so didn’t need any further treatment. The electroetching process won’t work if there’s anodising left on there.

 

[James_CX]

The etching process will attack any exposed metal so the rest was carefully masked with electrical tape. I used this because it’s waterproof, stretchy and sticks to itself well.

 

[James_CX]

Then it went into an electrolyte solution which is just tap water and dishwasher salt. The negative terminal of a car battery was attached to some old copper pipe and dunked in the solution. The positive terminal was attached to the cranks making sure only the section to be etched went below water level. Immediately both metals started fizzing and a cloud of black muck started coming from the cranks. I’m not sure what gas it was giving off so I did this outside in the cold!

 

[James_CX]

20 minutes later and the design is nicely engraved on the surface. I’d guess it’s about 0.5mm deep so you’d need to be careful on something with not much wall thickness.

EDIT just measured with calipers and it’s only 0.25mm deep!

 

[James_CX]

I then filled the design with modelling paint and put it on the radiator to dry.

 

[James_CX]

The finished result. I tried using a buffing wheel to remove the extra paint but it took most of the fill away too, although I quite like the effect on the logo. For the flag I refilled the colours and once dry buffed off the excess with a bit of course cloth on a block. This didn’t dip into the engraving and so left the fill intact.

 

[Tootyred]

That's really cool.....might have a go at that!

Whats the volume of water to salt or does it not really matter?

 

[James_CX]

That's really cool.....might have a go at that!

Whats the volume of water to salt or does it not really matter?

Do have a go, it’s quite fun seeing the design slowly appear. I’m sure there’s a perfect ratio of water to salt but I just used a fist-full of dishwasher granules and it worked fine!

 

[Frankenorange]

Love it!