What's a good battery charger for electro etching? Any common ones from an Auto Zone, O'Reilly's, or Amazon?? The battery charger I have is from Harbor Freight and it isn't turning on because it isn't detecting enough power to charge..

Edit: Car battery worked very well. I returned my battery charger, must’ve had a safety feature which prevented me from using it to electro etch.

But using my car battery worked well. It didn’t work using the q-tip method for some reason. I instead did the “reservoir” or “pool” method by creating a wall of plexiglass and sealing it with hot glue/liquid electrical tape.

Yours may have the auto on/off which will not work since it reads a short.  I just used my truck.

Used your battery? How long did it take per letter?

I've been wondering about this as well. I have a smart charger that won't work since it doesn't detect anything and a tiny trickle charger that works too slowly.

Technically you can use a 9V battery but I just used the battery out of my garden tractor I had better results with it.

You can also use a battery charger for a old  laptop.  I took a charging cable for a dead laptop and cut of the end that plugs into the machine.  Put alligator clips on the wires, then tested for a circut, once I figured out which was positive, I started the salt water etch with a q-tip clamped in the positive and got the job done.

How much faster did the larger battery etch? I've only used the 9v, when I used a battery.

One note on using a recycled plug-in charger/transformer. Make sure it's putting out DC current and not AC. A suprising number put out AC, at least of the ones I have laying around.

When I did it I started with a 9V and it was taking too long so I switched to my tractor battery and the difference was night and day