On Dec 31, 2015, at 8:30 AM, 'Jack Burgess' wrote:


I have one and have used it several times. You need to have a way to make the necessary drawings…I use a CAD program. The first time I used it, I was making some larger brass pieces (about 3/8”x1/4” actual size) and it worked fine. The next project was for the levers on the ends of an HO side dump car and most were quite small. I had problems with getting consistent etching on both ends of the pieces…one end would be fine but the other end would over-etch. At the same time, I etched a very fragile weathervane for a friend modeling in G scale and it came out fine.



The process is quite straight forward and covered pretty well in the instructions. Which part of the drawing is filled with black can be confusing…the parts need to be clear/white and the spaces between the parts filled with black. They don’t suggest widths for the frets holding the parts together but I used about .020" wide on .010” stock.



They do give you a pretty good set of materials and tools. You’ll need a much better apron (their plastic one is worthless) and a yellow light bulb is nice to be able to see while doing the darkroom stuff. Once the artwork was done and aligned, the brass and cardstock cut to size, etc., it took about 3 hours for the “darkroom” laminating and etching portion of the work including cleanup.



Jack Burgess

Does anyone have any experience with the Micro-Mark Pro-Etch System? Does it work to satisfaction? Is it over-priced? Are there better systems? Are they selling you a bunch of extra crap you don't need? Any advise is welcomed. Thanks. Mark Feddersen Denver, Iowa