ANODIZING EQUIPMENTS

I machined an item from 6061 aluminum. basically it is a ring (doughnut) with 6 bolt holes in the face, then counter sunk so the bolt head lays flush with the face.

I shot gloss black on them last night and had poor results. Around the machined edge of the countersink, the powder appeared to flow away…so…in essence, there is a hairline silver ring around each counter sink.

here is how I prepped:

1) scorch brited part
2) used brake cleaner
3) heated part to dry off any residue
4) powdered…cured

question: should I media blast the entire part to ensure the crisp edge of the counter sink gets etched?

Thanks

Am I ever going to be able to keep my polished parts shiny? Every time I anodize them they turn cloudy. I have tried shorter run times but still no luck. Any ideas. My whole purpose of doing this was to ano clear over polished parts so I would not have to polish the aluminum all the time.

That wasnt baked long enough the first time??

I PC an aluminum head to a snowmobile and it looks great
but i wonder if i baked long enough?

Thanks

BTW i was using powder by the pound and the color is fire engine
red extra durable coat i believe its called

I’m new to powder coating and have been trying some things and having some problems.

Background:
I built my own oven. I haven’t done a temp. calibration yet.
I have the Redline 250 gun.
I’ve added a ground wire from my spray rack to a ground rod outside my garage.

Successes:
Black on bare steel – looks great
Lollypop Purple on bare steel and bare aluminum – looks great

Failures:

1. Extreme chrome on bare steel and bare aluminum – color separates in places – See picture. Do I need thicker powder, lower temp, longer cook?
My oven has an old house oven temp controller – the powder says 392 for 30 – 60 minutes. I set the dial at very slightly under 400 and cooked for 35 minutes.

2. Illusion Amethyst and Illusion Aquamarine over black. I couldn’t get an even coat of powder to stick. Tried different settings on the gun, didn’t seem to matter

3. Lollypop Purple over Extreme chrome. Had the same problem with powder not sticking evenly. Tried with over Extreme chrome hot right out of curing oven – that’s the dark one. – seemed to get a more even coat of powder on, but then the chrome seemed to lift up and mix with the purple in the oven.
Tried it on Extreme Chrome cold. – very poor powder adherance and some lifting of the chrome into the purple in the oven as well. That’s the light colored one.

Hopefully the picture helps explain my situation. Please advise to what things I should do to correct my problems.

Thank you so much.

Spirit Flyer Creations

Daniel Gilbertson
Readstown, WI

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Good evening folks. I am new to anodizing, but I have been anodizing sucessfully for the last few weeks. I have a customer looking for a similar color to candy apple red. I have Red Borderex (Spelling), but it is still too light. Can someone share any tips via message boards here or perhaps via pm. I have the color wheel, but it is only so useful in this scenario cause color on paper doesn’t look like color on aluminum.

Thanks!

I am having some trouble getting zinc plating going… I have 1000 ml of solution and attempted to plate a single bolt (10mm by about 2 inches) which had been sandblasted and cleaned. I originally tried 12V @ 1.5 amps but later tried 12V @ 600 milliamps with the same results. As soon as I apply power, the bolt starts to fizz and turn black. If I pull it out, it is like a slimy coating on the bolt. You can see here where I rubbed some of the coating off:

If I let it go for a few minutes, I end up with something like this (this was the wire it was hanging from)

Any idea what I am doing wrong? The solution is 1000 ml of distilled H2O with 120 g of Aluminum Chloride and 20 g of Zinc Chloride.

thanks,
Nuc

I kinda have any idea on where to start but I wanted to see what other ideas were out there for getting into these tight spaces. The piece is aluminum and about 8" x 6". Thanks for any input.

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I have an aluminum tube I am trying to polish. It started off as a mill finish 8 foot length of 6061 AL, and my goal from square one has been to polish it to a finish that will not leave ANY black residue on hands or clothing that touches it.

I started with 220 grit, and I sanded the whole thing lengthwise, then moved up a grit to 300, and went 90 degrees to the original grain, and kept repeating this process up to 500 grit, each time making sure the last sanding marks were completely covered up.

After that I switched to polish, a creme polish made by Blue Magic called "Metal polish cream". I just spend 90 minutes with a power buffer (9" harbor freight) after an hour of hand polishing and it still does the same damn thing, even if I clean the surface with gasoline, anything that touches it with any pressure turns black.

How do I get the #*$& thing to stop doing this?

Thanks in advance for any help guys….

Hey folks. I’ve been doing lots of searches on here the last few days and have picked up some good info, but it has all been tangential so far.

We made a big bad motor controller that is housed in a CNC milled aluminum enclosure/heatink. The prototypes we milled out of solid billets of 6061-T6 but for production we wanted to have the rough shape cast out of 356 alloy to cut down both on waste and milling time (otherwise we are chucking out 80# of aluminum to make a 12# part).

So far, so good, until we take the parts to get anodized. They leave the shop all gleaming and with the surface roughness you’d expect from a final finishing pass, but are are coming back significantly rougher (120 grit?) and with loads of tiny white spots unless we stick with clear.

My understanding is that the increase in roughness is from using a caustic (alkaline) etch which dissolves aluminum but not silicon, but as for the spots we aren’t sure if the problem is that the raised bits of silicon are the problem, or pin hole porosity or what.

From what I have gathered – mainly from searching the forums here – it appears a slightly different anodizing process needs to be used for 356 aluminum. The process I have come up with (and would greatly appreciate help filling in the particulars) is:

1. degrease/clean
<Spray rinse>
2. mild acid etch (instead of the typical lye solution)
<Spray rinse>
3. deox/desmut (with a fluoride salt/strong acid – nitric?)
<Spray rinse>
4. Normal sulfuric acid anodizing (4.5-6ASF)
<Spray rinse/quick dip in baking soda solution/spray rinse>
5. Dye
6. Seal (preferably a low temperature sealer – nickel acetate?)

One anodizing shop said I needed to have the castings "impregnated" which, frankly, sounds like a real nightmare. Another said that bead blasting the exterior would take care of our problems.

Also, I have used the typical lye etching bath to strip anodizing, but that clearly is a no-no with castings. Suggestions on that would be appreciated, too, because a machined enclosure has a lot of "added value" in it at that point and it really sucks to have to chuck into the recycling bin because the anodizing didn’t go well.

Thanks!

I want to PC some suspension parts on my sled and was told to use low temp powders. Thoughts on this?