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rawmeat
Generally, they weren't etched or engraved, they were roll stamped. While less than satisfactory from a structural point of view, the fact that rolling dies forge the material into round-bottomed grooves is much better than cutting, because the stress peak is lower and it acts on a part of the material which has been work hardened.
Oh, and roll stamping is several orders of magnitude cheaper than engraving for mass production, which is the actual reason why they used that technique :)