Anodizing at home

[oc1]

I really like the faded-in look Mike.
-steve

[Donnyboat]

Thanks Mike, your pursistance is to be complimented, we are all learning, thats why Allan had the confidence to sticky your post, thanks again, cheers Don.

[Dominick]

Mike reading this thread with great interest.  Keep at it.  Dominick

[gstours]

Mike, you are doing things that even angels fear to do.  I really enjoy your posts.  Thanks.

[broadway]

Gotta agree with Steve, I like the faded look and the purple also.
Nice work bro,
Dom

[mhc]

Thanks again guys, the set up I'm using is starting to give better results - with less surprises  

Thanks for all this, Looks pretty good from the pictures. At minimum you've got it where it will protect the raw aluminum which is the point of the process,hope to see you hanging a few fish soon!

Thanks Sheridan, being able to apply a convienient protective coating on raw aluminium is what got me started on this. The color possibilities didn't really interest me that much - when given a choice of color by custom part suppliers like Tom I often choose silver for practical reasons like scratches don't show as much and it matches any color. I think for a novice like me, adding color and getting the dying right is a way of telling if the anodizing is working. Having said that, it's hard not to notice some of the cool effects people get with 'splash', 'fade in' and 'masking' techniques and I can see myself doing a few party tricks with some pieces. Aside from the red-black fade in I attempted, I had a quick attempt at masking during one of the recent trials. The concept is pretty simple and there is a few ways to do it, one is to dye the entire piece the color you want the text or graphics to be then mask the design with stickers or rubber cement (low strength so it's easier to remove). Next bleach the unmasked area with straight household bleach, rinse and then dye the background color. Seal as normal before removing the stickers or rubber cement then seal again for the area under the mask. My attempt was with my new black dye, it took over 5 min to bleach the black and the unsealed anodize came off with it leaving the black graphics surounded by raw aluminium.   The online videos I've seen take a few seconds to bleach the colors



Back to the real stuff, Ted (Maxed Out) offered to send a few of his raw handle arms to experiment on - when I accepted his generous offer he mentioned he threw a 'few' other parts in the box;



Thanks Ted! That will keep me busy with a few projects. The first trials with the new black dye were pretty good so I decided to try a 2/0 and 4/0 Ted handle arm, aiming for 1 MIL at 6ASF. The result was the best yet, the finish and color were good. The reccessed area had a very slight irridescence that was not obvious but was there;







As I've mentioned, it's difficult to photograph black - I tried a lot of angles but couldn't capture the irridescence. I've since stripped them and tried again (1 MIL @ 7.5 ASF) I'll get photos in the daylight but the fine finish on the raw handles degraded a bit with the stripping and I didn't re-polish them but the anodize looks good.
I've got a few more colors of anodizing dye from caswell so I'll be playing with them at some stage after I wrap up some loose projects like the XN Cortez squidder frame and U/H surfmaster 100.

Mike
 

[Donnyboat]

your a bizzy man Mike, thanks for passing this info on, I just cant get enough of it, cheers Don.

[mhc]

A quick update to the anodizing trials, including the XN Cortez Squidder frame result I have posted on that thread but thought the anodizing should be mentioned here as well. An earlier trial at 9.0 ASF and 65F starting temp produced a good finish that seemed hard but it didn't take dye very well - since I was not dyeing the frame I used the same settings and was happy with the result;



After telling anyone that looked remotely interested that I wasn't particularly concerned with anodizing colors and just wanted to put a clear or maybe black protective coating on parts, I picked up a six color starter pack of caswell dye on ebay.    The first test run of the colors was at 9.0 ASF, started at 74F (climbed to 81F), all were dyed for approx 15 min - the colors took pretty well although the blue took too well and ended up close to black. There was a chalky residue on most of the pieces that I am guessing was caused by the combination of higher ASF and Temp.  The red (fabric dye) and black pieces on the right of the following photo were not part of this trial;



I did another few dyeing time trials with the blue, ~ 1.5, 3.0 & 7.0 min, all at 6 ASF & ~ 70F



The chalky residue left on the first set of colored pieces wasn't buffing out easily so I stripped, re-sanded and did another run at 6 ASF, start temp 66F finish 73F. Dye time was reduced to 2 min (blue and violet), 4 min (red and green) and 5 min (yellow and orange)







And a bit more experimenting with muticolor fade-ins to see how the colors work together;



I tried a speckled effect on this piece, but will need to check the CCTV footage to see how I did it  



Thanks
Mike

[Swami805]

Looks really good, the fades in particular is a nice effect. Should make for some unique reels.

[Alto Mare]

Nice experimenting Mike! I really like the lighter and darker colors together.
possibilities with the mixed colors combinations are now endless.
You are doing really good !

Sal

[Rothmar2]

Gee you’ve put some time into this! Hope you are getting the confidence to start getting some finished pieces done for your projects.

[mo65]

Looking fantastic!

[Crow]

Fantastic doesn't quite cover it ! Exceptional work !

[Tiddlerbasher]

Mike you are an inspiration

[alantani]

amazing.......