Anodising

[Dellboy]

has anyone bought an anodising kit ?
any advise ?

[Dellboy]

anyone ?

[ovenpaa]

We did a fair amount of anodising 2-3 years ago and I probably still have some lengths of soft titanium wire we used for hangers.

[Dellboy]

any advise on kits ? was looking on e bay but would like a reccomendation

[ovenpaa]

Caswell Europe used to do something, We built our own, basic items such a the acid and de-mineralised water are easily sourced, ours came from a motor factors. Tanks can be small HDPE water header tanks, and the power supply was something I already had. We used to get the pre-clean and de-smutting solutions plus dyes can be sourced from Gateros http://gaterosplating.co.uk

You will need hanger frames, I made mine from 50x10 aluminium bar bolted together and hung on the tank tops and we used Titanium wire to hang from to prevent burning off the parts. Biggest problem this time of year will be temperature as the process stops at around 25C (From memory, I would need to check my notes) So you need to monitor the tank temperature. I also added current and voltage measurement for fine tuning the surface current.

[ovenpaa]

A picture of one of our early set-ups here:

http://shootingshed.co.uk/wp/2012/03/an ... afternoon/

[ovenpaa]

An example of an early job:

[Mattnall]

Dave, how easy was it for you to get a consistent black colour of parts annodised at different times?
Did you also try other colours than black?

[ovenpaa]

Matt, repeatability of colour tone and depth was always an issue however they usually turned out black when needed. This is not a DiY thing either, I have had many parts professionally anodised in the past, same material, same company yet compare a part from 2 years ago to a new part and they are slightly different. These are hard anodised parts so it could be down to the vapour honing process...

We tried a few colours, some worked perfectly, others less so. The important thing is to spend time on current calcs and keep a record of everything to the minutest detail so you can repeat what works best for you. Biggest problem I found was controlling the temperature on warm days.

[1066]

If you are looking at just doing small parts I found this site helpful.:
http://astro.neutral.org/anodise.shtml

I use a car battery charger as the DC supply, sulphuric acid from B&Q, Dylon fabric dye, distilled water from Halfords and I fix the colour in a £15 electric rice cooker from Aldi.
Really "Heath Robinson" I know, but it works for me.