Review of Bench Top and Small Modular Etching Units

Increased automation and improvements in cost‐effective volume production techniques have, paradoxically, created additional difficulties when small quantities of printed circuit boards are required. There is consequently a growing interest in bench top and small modular equipment capable of producing high quality boards. This market, once almost exclusively confined to research and development laboratories, has extended rapidly throughout universities and polytechnics, government agencies and manufacturers of all types of electrical and electronic equipment. The impracticability of introducing small quantities into a volume production unit has extended the usefulness of such equipment to the “in‐house” facilities of the high volume printed circuit board manufacturers themselves.