Advantages of PCM

The process of photo chemical machining, PCM, is often referred to as photo chemical milling, chemical etching, acid etching, and metal etching.

There are several advantages of Photo Chemical Machining including:

Low Cost Tooling: By utilizing precision tooling and photographic negatives, the PCM process eliminates the delays and costs of hard tooling and mechanical dies. This results in highly accurate tools that are made at greatly reduced costs in days, rather than weeks.

Integrity of Metal Properties: The nature of photo chemical machining ensures that the internal structure of the metal used remains unchanged by the process.  As a result, there is no effect on the original state of the metals with respect to hardness, grain structure, and ductility.

Multiplicity of Design: With the ability to reproduce patterns photographically, parts requiring a large panel with repeating patterns, or parts with several patterns requiring tight tolerances, can be produced easily and efficiently.

Absence of Burring: The PCM process produces parts that are void of burrs that could ultimately be detrimental to the proper functioning of finished parts.

Rigid Tolerances: Parts can be made from metal thickness as thin as .0005”. The standard tolerance is 20% of the thickness of the metal or alloy used to produce the part.