Hey guys So I tried to etch something today, but It came out

Did you use mechanical or electro-chemical etching?

If its not too deep or hardened steel, just resurface it

>>1081866
It's aluminum, and I used ferric chloride.
How so I go about resurfacing it?

>>1081868
Get a dead flat surface or sheet of glass, wet-sand it from about 600 through to 1000 grit
Thing I found with aluminium is that you do want it very smooth to work well with stuff like etching, anodising and the like- basically polish it near-mirror or as close too as you can

>>1081870
I'm worried about it going through or Having the front plate too thin. I'm going to be stomping on it. It's a guitar pedal and the enclosure is 4-5 mm thick. The etch went in about 1mm though. I could wet sand it until it's primed again. This time I used 150 grit. I'll go up next time. Will it be too thin if I sand it clean though? Thanks for the advice

>>1081873
3-4mm thick enclosure is more than enough for a stomp box. You'll break something else much before the box.
That said, sanding 1mm away without turning the box round is going to be a pain in the ass. I wouldn't try. Milling would be a better option.
Or you could forget the fancy etching and just fill the current etching and paint it or use that printed foil which is applied using water.

>>1081873
4-5mm is pretty sturdy, but if you're worried about going too deep then you might be better off re-doing the resist areas by hand (wax, sharpie, paint etc) and just fixing up what's there already until you're happy with it.

Guess the other way would be to get some 2-3mm aluminium bar (its pretty cheap and at most good hardware stores), cut it to size, polish it up all nice and then re-do the etching on that and either bolting it up or epoxy and clamp it to the pedal.
I don't see a few mm extra thickness affecting how it works

Plus, if you're using stock bar, you can try whatever you want with your etches and if you fuck a couple up its not going to have any mechanical effect or cost you very much