Photo-chemical machining and electroforming of 3D components

The production process for photo-chemical machining (PCM) is similar in many ways to the manufacture of Printed Circuit Boards in that photolithography is used to define an image on a metal substrate and the unwanted material is etched away using acid. Unlike the PCB industry, however, who only etch copper, a wide range of metals can be processed by PCM manufacturers. For example stainless steel, aluminium, a variety of magnetic alloys, molybdenum, titanium, gold and other exotic metals as well as copper and its alloys are regularly etched to produce components. An alternative technique to etching is electroforming. In this method, instead of removing metal, the component is built up by depositing metal, usually by electroplating, using a photoresist image to define the outline of the component