DIY Home aluminum Anodizing for a Hobby DIY Information on home anodising (or anodizing!) aluminium (or aluminum!

) using simple methods and inexpensive dyes. Disclaimer - None of the following is garrenteed to be strictly accurate. Howeve r it is garranteed to be extremely harmful to your eyes, fingers and other extre mities if you don't take care with chemicals. Take care and don't blame me if it all goes badly wrong. Spelling - anodise or anodize - I am British. Many people are American. I spell in British English. Aluminium Anodising. Other countries spell this Aluminum Ano dizing. I am going to stick to Aluminium Anodising. I do wonder if Google knows the difference. I also say Sulphuric, not Sulfuric. However, I might spell it an other way just for variety! Anodizing Aluminum - Introduction. Aluminium alloys are a good choice of metal for home machining. I normally use a luminium on my mini-lathe to make telescope parts, camera adapters and other use ful bits and pieces. There is an unfortunate drawback to using aluminium in this way. The main advantage and disadvantage of aluminium is its relative softness to other metals such as steel. This soft nature makes it much easier to machine on a mini-lathe than steel, but, once you have completed your part, it is very s usceptible to small dents and surface scratches. Chemically speaking, aluminium is an extremely reactive metal. We are familiar w ith the action of the environment on iron. It oxidises quite readily to produce iron oxide - or rust as it's more commonly known. Aluminium is more reactive tha n iron, and, as such, will rust more readily. However, with aluminium a rough la yer of aluminium oxide forms which strongly inhibits further oxidation. This is why aluminium is known for its resilience in corrosive environments - eg car rad iators or boats. After a period of time the aluminium "rusts" - slowly producing a white powdery coat.

Thankfully for the aluminum industry there is a technique which overcomes the in herent softness of the metal and protects against further oxidation. Using chemi cal processes it is possible to build a carefully controlled layer of aluminium hydroxide on the surface of the metal which is extremely hard - much harder and more durable than the rough natural oxidised layer that normally forms. The proc ess involves suspending the aluminium in and acid bath and passing an electric c urrent through the it. This is known as anodizing - so called because the alumin ium part forms the anode in the electrolysis bath. The other advantage of anodizing aluminium is the potential of coloured anodizin g dye. Coloured dye seeps into the microscopic pores of the anodized layer and c olours it. The layer is then sealed and the colour appears as part of the alumin ium metal itself. This can be used to great artistic effect, producing aluminium parts with strikingly tasteless colours to adorn your motor bike or, more topic ally, telescope. With optical applications, black is the most popular anodizing colour to reduce internal reflections. Typically of course, black is supposed to be one of the most difficult colours to achieve and commercial black anodizing dye fetches the highest price. Anodizing aluminium (or indeed anodizing aluminum) is a fairly simple process, a nd providing you can lay your hands on the correct chemicals (ie sulfuric acid) it is fairly straightforward to do simple diy anodizing aluminium in the home. I would limit yourself to anodizing aluminium in fairly small amounts - if you wa

nt to anodize a large object you need a lot of electrical power and a lot of aci d, so if you want to do an entire bike frame in one go, I suggest you contact an aluminium anodizing company. First Experiments DIY Anodizing Aluminium Ever since I have made things out of aluminium, I have had a desire to anodize t hem. Recently I finally got around to pursuing this idea - this was all started by finding a supply of the required acid. After that it was all surpassingly sim ple. Instead of plunging into an accurate description of my refined anodizing techniq ue, I am going to run through initial experimental trial. As mentioned above, I have wanted to try anodizing for some time, and have read quite a few websites on the subject. However, the stumbling block was getting ho ld of enough sulphuric acid (H2SO4). By "enough" I mean at least 2 or 3 litres o f 20% sulphuric acid solution. Two or three gallons would be better. Now, sulphuric acid is battery acid - so potentially you could buy lots of batte ries and tip it all out - but that acid may well be contaminated. This also soun ds like an expensive approach. My local automotive shop (Halfords) said they are not allowed to sell the stuff. So I was a bit stuck. Then I discovered an onlin e shp which seemed to sell all manner of exciting chemicals mailorder. Then next day 500ml of 98% sulphuric acid arrived. Cool! November 2007: Please note the shop no longer exists. It is very difficult to fi nd anybody selling the chemicals these days. It might be worth talking to these guys http://www.caswelleurope.co.uk/ for advise. Also, some places sell battery acid which should work - I think battery acid needs to be cut 50/50 with water t o be the right strength for anodizing. for example...

Here I ought to mention how nasty Sulphuric Acid is. Wear all the required prote ctive clothing etc etc and make sure there is a nice big bucket of cold water ne arby which has a load of bicarbonate of soda mixed up in it. If you suspect anyt hing of having acid on it, dip it in the bucket and it will fizz. This includes you hands. Wash down the work areas afterwards with the bicarb solution. occasio nally wiping some over your face and other exposed skin won't hurt either. When the dilute solution gets on you or your clothes, you'll not notice straight away .. do be careful. The acid bath gives off all sorts of nasty gases as well, and you should really have a lid, or special fume absorbing balls floating in the ac id bath. I didn't quite go this far, but make sure the work area is extremely we ll ventilated and don't breath near the tank.

The first thing we tried was making up a small amount of acid solution in an ove nproof dish. To 300ml of water (pure, distilled, deionised water of the sort you might top up your car battery with) we added roughly 50ml of acid. Naturally th is was all done with lots of gloves and eye protection. Remember - AAA - Always Add Acid. Whilst waiting for the solution to cool down a bit (adding acid create s heat) I had a dig around in the garage and found a roll of roofing lead. I was just able to lift it! I cut off a square with the sharp carving knife and bent it into an L shape and sat it in my acid bath to act as the cathode. Next I foun d a piece of scrap aluminium round bar and stood this in the acid bath so its bo ttom inch was under the acid. Using a PC power supply I connected 12 volts to th e bath. The positive lead was fixed to the aluminium bar, and the negative lead attached to the lead cathode.

When I turned on the power, lots of bubbles formed on the lead cathode, and a fe w bubbles formed on the aluminium anode. More bizarrely, a faint purple colour w as seen around the aluminium. This is apparently due to manganese in the alumini um alloy.

I left the whole thing to fizz for about 45 minutes. Then I removed the aluminiu m and washed it under the tap. I then mixed up some red food colouring with some water and stood the bar in this for about 15 minutes. It turned pink! Finally I boiled the part in water for half an hour to seal it. I ended up with a alumini um bar with a pink bottom!

This was rather exciting! I promptly repeated the experiment with a bit of bette r finished aluminium - the result was amazing! I was very happy. Improving my DIY anodizing

Excited by my result I decided to try and improve things I bit. For some reason I had some nagging doubts about using a PC power supply, so the first thing I di d was raid the parts bin and make a simple 12v power supply from a 120VA transfo rmer and a bridge rectifier. Make sure your wires are rated for at least 5 amps, preferably 10 amps. Putting an ammeter in the circuit lets you see whats going on. The next thing I did was get a slightly bigger tank, and mix up the full 2.5 lit res of acid solution. I made a bigger cathode from the lead, and rigged up some aluminium U section to hang things in the acid with, and got some aluminium wire . I purchased various substances to try as dye. The most successful dyes are Dylon clothes dyes. The key is to have an organic dye that is small enough to enter t he microscopic pores in the unsealed anodized layer. I tried some writing inks, but that was less successful. Food colouring works very poorly, and then only if it is organic. You can buy commercial anodizing dyes, but for now I will stick to the clothes dye as this works well enough for me. I suspect the clothes dye c ould fade a bit in sunlight over time.

I also purchased some Caustic Soda granules. This must be mixed up into solution and your aluminium part can be dipped in it - this etches the surface and remov es grease and gunk... it also removes the natural layer of rough anodizing ready for the acid tank.

Dipping aluminium into a strong caustic soda solution is fun. It fizzes in a ter ribly satisfactory manner and gives off a lot of smell vapours. And I mean a lot . Its a bit like a gas attack on the Somme. Don't do it indoors. Do it outside. At the top of a mountain. In a stiff breeze. It also splatters hot caustic soda solution over anything it can reach. Don't have anything you might want to keep nearby. Don't forget the main domestic use of this stuff is dissolving and unblo cking organic matter out of drains. Your hands are organic matter. So if your wi

fe's favorite wooden chopping board. You have been warned. Shops like B+Q can be searched for most of the things you need. Results Results of my home DIY anodising

As shown above the pink post and the pink tube coloured using "organic" red food colouring. The red test lump. This was coloured using "Scarlet" Dylon clothes dye. The black grating holder. This is basically an M42 extension ring that holds my diffraction grating. Coloured with "Ebony Black" Dylon clothes dye. Who said get ting a good black on anodised aluminium is difficult? The purple/blue ring. This is another test... I think it came out of the inside of a hard disk. Coloured using "Madonna Blue" Dylon clothes dye. Before anodisin g I removed the exisiting anodised layer with a good fizz in the caustic soda. Two parts of my homemade filter wheel using the black and blue dyes from the abo ve examples.

Step by Step Step by Step home DIY anodizing of aluminium The exact steps any home DIY anodizer is going to take are dictated by time, ava ilable resources, attention to detail and various other factors. Here is my quic k guide to home aluminium anodizing - but don't blame me if it doesn't work. Mix up 10 to 20% Sulphuric Acid solution with pure distilled water. Enough to fi ll whatever container you are going to use about 2/3 full. Leave to cool. This m ixture can be used many hundreds of times for anodizing runs. It will eventually pick up impurities any become less effective. Remember, never add water to acid , always add acid to water so it doesn't fizz and bite back! Do not let any extr a water, caustic soda, sodium bicarbonate or similiar near the acid bath. Prepare your aluminium piece. Finish is everything - anodizing does not hide a p oor finish. Clean it up with 1200 paper and maybe polish. Cover your working area in something disposable. Putting the DIY anodizing bath on a big sheet of glass is a good idea - keeps any splashed acid off the worktop . Make sure the bucket of sodium barcarbonate solution is handy for dipping thin gs in. I suggest getting a big (ie several kilos) carton of bicarbonate from a c atering suppler or cash and carry. If you do spill a serious amount of acid, its nice to have some alkali handy to neutralise it. Fizz the aluminium in caustic soda solution until it looks a nice grey colour. I f the aluminium is already anodized, it is possible to remove the anodized layer by leaving it in the caustic soda bath for longer. I've not read of the correct

strength of the caustic soda bath for preparing the metal. An eggcup or two of caustic soda granules in a pint of warm water works for me. If you have some desmut in nitric acid to clean of the other metals, then wash o ff the part once more with lots of water. Without nitric acid, just try to clean up the part as best you can with hot soapy water and then rinse.

Suspend the aluminium part in the acid so it is completely immersed using some k ind of aluminium wire or aluminium strut. The only metals allowed in the bath ar e aluminium and lead. Make sure you get a good electrical connection. Bear in mi nd that any parts where the suspending wire touches the part it will not be anod ized, and will not take up the dye. Twist a bit of wire into a tapped hole or so mething. Make sure that you don't touch the part. Grease from finger prints can leave a mark on the finished item. Get some good gloves. Place a Lead cathode in the bath. This should have a surface area of at least tw ice that of the aluminium part. Don't let it touch the aluminium part at the ano de. Attach the positive connection of your power supply to the aluminium anode and t he negative connection to the lead cathode. Run the power at 12 volts for about 45 minutes. The cathode will fizz a lot, the anode will also show some small bubbles. The acid will heat up. If you are not sure its working, use an ammeter to see whats going on. You should not allow the acid to become warm - ideally it wants to stay at 20C. Let the acid cool betwee n anodizing runs, or rig up a cooler. Remember only lead or aluminium in the tan k. Even a fan blowing on the tank helps. If you think about it, 12v at, say 2 am ps, acts like a 24 watt header, and thats before the heat created by the reactio n. There is a lot of words written about what current to anodize with. Apparently y ou are supposed to anodize at between 4 and 12 amps per square foot of anode sur face area. With most parts its almost impossible to estimate the surface area. A fter etching in the caustic soda, you'll throw your calculations out even furthe r. For my purposes I just run the whole thing at 12 volts and let it draw as muc h current. Remove aluminium part from the acid and wash in distilled water. Try not to drip acid from the part over the kitchen whilst moving to the water. If you must wal k around the house with bits of aluminium covered in acid, hold a bowl of bicarb onate underneath. Dip the part in the chosen dye for between 1 and 15 minutes depending on how muc h colour you want. Heating the dye will increase the speed of colour uptake, how ever no hotter than 50C or you will start to seal the layer. Experiment is the k ey! With the Dylon dyes I normally mix them up with about a litre of warm water and use that. The dye mix can be used over and over again. Keep the dye mix out of sunlight. Boil the part in distilled water for 30 minutes to seal the surface. Some of the dye will leak out into the water before the surface is sealed, but its not too much of a problem. You might want to hold the part in hot steam for a while befo re you put it in the water. Start the water at about 95C and bring it to a simme ring boil over the course of a few minutes. You can buy anodizing sealers to add to the water, but I've not needed this. I have an unconfirmed suspicion that co mmerical anodizing dyes need a special sealer. Give it a good rub with a very soft white cloth. Sometimes a get a bit of colour coming off the sealed part, but this stops after a few moments rubbing. I find a good long boil reduces this problem. Step by Step home DIY anodizing of aluminium The exact steps any home DIY anodizer is going to take are dictated by time, ava ilable resources, attention to detail and various other factors. Here is my quic

k guide to home aluminium anodizing - but don't blame me if it doesn't work. Mix up 10 to 20% Sulphuric Acid solution with pure distilled water. Enough to fi ll whatever container you are going to use about 2/3 full. Leave to cool. This m ixture can be used many hundreds of times for anodizing runs. It will eventually pick up impurities any become less effective. Remember, never add water to acid , always add acid to water so it doesn't fizz and bite back! Do not let any extr a water, caustic soda, sodium bicarbonate or similiar near the acid bath. Prepare your aluminium piece. Finish is everything - anodizing does not hide a p oor finish. Clean it up with 1200 paper and maybe polish. Cover your working area in something disposable. Putting the DIY anodizing bath on a big sheet of glass is a good idea - keeps any splashed acid off the worktop . Make sure the bucket of sodium barcarbonate solution is handy for dipping thin gs in. I suggest getting a big (ie several kilos) carton of bicarbonate from a c atering suppler or cash and carry. If you do spill a serious amount of acid, its nice to have some alkali handy to neutralise it. Fizz the aluminium in caustic soda solution until it looks a nice grey colour. I f the aluminium is already anodized, it is possible to remove the anodized layer by leaving it in the caustic soda bath for longer. I've not read of the correct strength of the caustic soda bath for preparing the metal. An eggcup or two of caustic soda granules in a pint of warm water works for me. If you have some desmut in nitric acid to clean of the other metals, then wash o ff the part once more with lots of water. Without nitric acid, just try to clean up the part as best you can with hot soapy water and then rinse.

Suspend the aluminium part in the acid so it is completely immersed using some k ind of aluminium wire or aluminium strut. The only metals allowed in the bath ar e aluminium and lead. Make sure you get a good electrical connection. Bear in mi nd that any parts where the suspending wire touches the part it will not be anod ized, and will not take up the dye. Twist a bit of wire into a tapped hole or so mething. Make sure that you don't touch the part. Grease from finger prints can leave a mark on the finished item. Get some good gloves. Place a Lead cathode in the bath. This should have a surface area of at least tw ice that of the aluminium part. Don't let it touch the aluminium part at the ano de. Attach the positive connection of your power supply to the aluminium anode and t he negative connection to the lead cathode. Run the power at 12 volts for about 45 minutes. The cathode will fizz a lot, the anode will also show some small bubbles. The acid will heat up. If you are not sure its working, use an ammeter to see whats going on. You should not allow the acid to become warm - ideally it wants to stay at 20C. Let the acid cool betwee n anodizing runs, or rig up a cooler. Remember only lead or aluminium in the tan k. Even a fan blowing on the tank helps. If you think about it, 12v at, say 2 am ps, acts like a 24 watt header, and thats before the heat created by the reactio n. There is a lot of words written about what current to anodize with. Apparently y ou are supposed to anodize at between 4 and 12 amps per square foot of anode sur face area. With most parts its almost impossible to estimate the surface area. A fter etching in the caustic soda, you'll throw your calculations out even furthe r. For my purposes I just run the whole thing at 12 volts and let it draw as muc h current. Remove aluminium part from the acid and wash in distilled water. Try not to drip acid from the part over the kitchen whilst moving to the water. If you must wal k around the house with bits of aluminium covered in acid, hold a bowl of bicarb onate underneath. Dip the part in the chosen dye for between 1 and 15 minutes depending on how muc h colour you want. Heating the dye will increase the speed of colour uptake, how ever no hotter than 50C or you will start to seal the layer. Experiment is the k

ey! With the Dylon dyes I normally mix them up with about a litre of warm water and use that. The dye mix can be used over and over again. Keep the dye mix out of sunlight. Boil the part in distilled water for 30 minutes to seal the surface. Some of the dye will leak out into the water before the surface is sealed, but its not too much of a problem. You might want to hold the part in hot steam for a while befo re you put it in the water. Start the water at about 95C and bring it to a simme ring boil over the course of a few minutes. You can buy anodizing sealers to add to the water, but I've not needed this. I have an unconfirmed suspicion that co mmerical anodizing dyes need a special sealer. Give it a good rub with a very soft white cloth. Sometimes a get a bit of colour coming off the sealed part, but this stops after a few moments rubbing. I find a good long boil reduces this problem. Some comments on home aluminium anodising Dye After the aluminium has been anodised in the acid bath, it is time to dye it a p retty colour. There are commercially available anodizing dyes. I have no doubt t hat these provide good, repeatable results. However, they do cost. Depending on the colour, they cost between 20 and 40 for a dose of dye that makes about 4 gallo ns. This is not overly expensive, but still, a cost to be avoided if possible. T he other problem is that there are only a handful of places that sell it to the home anodiser. As I have said elsewhere, clothes dye makes a pretty good replacement. A few poi nts about clothes dye: It doesn't last forever - I imagine it will fade in sunlight over time, but I ha ve not proved this yet. A batch of dye made up in a pan - I usually use about 1 litre of water for a pac k of dye, does not last forever either. After three or four uses you will need t o replace it. A packet of dye costs about a pound, so sooner or later you might as well buy some proper commercial anodising dye. You have to be very very careful about which dye you select in the shop Dye does exactly what it says on the tin. Try not to make the kitchen go pretty colours as well as the aluminium anodising.

I have not had much luck with food colouring. Food colouring advertised as "natu ral" sort of works, but clothes dye with a much more striking finish to home ano dised aluminium parts. THe only clothes dye that I have found that works is Dylon Multi-Purpose dye. Ot her Dylon brands do NOT work. I guess the dye particles are not small enough. Dy es that do not work include the Dylon COLD range and the dylon PURE COLOUR range .

These dyes do work. Navy Blue give an almost black colour. Ebony black is a grea t black. Most of them give pleasing results, but after a few uses start to give poorer results. These dyes do not work. Don't bother trying them Some hints and tips on home aluminium anodising Dye This pages contains some small comments to help you on your path to home anodisi ng - just some small remarks that I've noticed during my anodizing aluminium exp eriments.

The caustic soda phase is very critical. A minute or so in the bath is required. Leaving it a bit longer gives a very matt finish to the final aluminium part: W hich is a Good Thing (TM) if you are anodising an aluminium optical part. The thing to remember with the caustic soda bath is that it is dissolving the al uminium. Leave it too long and it the part gets smaller. This is generally notic ed when two closely fitting parts no longer closely fit. Also, after 10 minutes in the bath, tapped holes will no longer hold their correct sized screws. You can remove anodising with a few extra minutes in the caustic soda bath. I fi nd that a mug of caustic soda granules in 2 litres of hot water will strip off t he anodising in about 5 minutes. The caustic soda solution ends up looking very yucky. Also see the point above. After the caustic soda bath phase, it is very important to clean the part. Becau se aluminium is normally in an alloy with lots of other metals, these metals wil l smut the surface. You can buy de-smutting solution if you like. However, I fin d a good wash works wonders. After the caustic soda bath, fill the sink with hot water with lots of washing up liquid. With rubber gloves on, scrub the part wit h a toothbrush until it is an nice even finish. Don't use a "green scrubby thing " or a Brilo pad - this will scratch the surface (which you might want, so hey!) . This scrubbing is VERY important to the final finish. Getting a good electrical connection is vital. It is worth spending some time ma king something out of aluminium that has a threaded section to screw into tapped holes in your aluminium part. If you are anodising several things at once, you' ll find the one with the poorest connection doesn't anodise well Don't use steel screws to hold the part in the acid - steel in the acid will dis solve!!! Don't use those pretty coloured aluminium bolts sold for bicycles either. These are anodised... I supposed you could caustic soda them in the bath first and the n use them... I haven't tried. Anodised aluminium does not conduct electricity well. If you have used a bit of scrap aluminium to hold a part in the acid bath, clean off the anodising with a file before you use it again. I find about 1 hour in the acid bath gives a good anodized layer. Be very very careful not to touch a freshly anodised part with your fingers. The grease will ruin the final part. You end up with a nice anodised fingerprint on the part.

If you use steel bulldog/alligator clips to attach the power to the acid bath, b e sure to dip them in the bicarb solution before you put them away, other wise t hey will slowly dissolve. Boil mercilessly. Boiling for 45 minutes is not going to harm the part. This ens ures a good seal on the anodising. It doesn't matter if the part being anodised touchs the plastic sides of the aci d bath. It does matter if it touchs the lead cathode. Make the cathode as big as you reasonably can. Fold the lead around on itself se veral times to get a good surface area. After a few sessions the acid bath will have a lot of muck at the bottom. This d oesn't effect the anodising qualities. If you snap a hardened steel tap off in your job, anodise it anyway. When the an odising is finished, you will find the broken end of the tap that was embedded i n the aluminium part has dissolved. Don't do this too often otherwise you'll end up with very mucky acid. With larger parts, the acid bath will fizz lots. It is best to do the anodising outside. You are going to use a lot of distilled water. Battery topup water can be purcha sed in Halfords in gallon containers, but it is about 3 quid. This gets expensiv e. I've yet to figure out a way of getting hold of lots cheaply. I suppose I cou

ld make my own water distiller. Don't keep the caustic soda in the same box/drawer/cupboard as the acid bath. Do put a warning label on the box to say it contains nasty stuff. Don't leave lead cathodes where animals are going to lick them. Shutting your pet cat in the living room during anodising sessions is a)A really good idea b)Really pisses the cat off. This also applies to small children. This picture shows my part completed homemade telescope focuser. The black drawt ube was dyed with Navy Blue multi-purpose dylon. The blue bits with some old sol ution of Madonna blue. DIY aluminium surface finish and preparation One of the key aspects of anodising is surface preparation and finish. Anodising aluminium does nothing to hide surface imperfections, any flaws in the surface of your aluminium part will be made ten times worse by the anodising process. To get a nicely anodised part the surface needs to be free of imperfections and smooth. It also needs to be free of natural oxidation. First we must consider the application. If the part is going to be out of site, and is just being anodising to protect it, then surface finish is clearly unimpo rtant. There is little point spending hours working away with sand paper and pol ish to get a fine finish on something nobody is ever going to see! If the anodis ing is merely functional then all that is required is a few minutes in a bath of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) to strip off the natural layer of oxide. This i s followed by scrubbing with a pot cleaner under a stream of water to clean off the worst of the non-aluminium impurities brought to the surface by the caustic soda bath. Whenever aluminium is place in a caustic soda bath, the aluminium is dissolved. Most aluminium alloys are a mixture of aluminium and other metals. The caustic s oda removes the aluminium but leaves behind a slight black residue of other meta ls that can mar the surface and reduce the effectiveness of the anodising. The w orst of this can be removed by a few moments work with a kitchen "green scrubbin g thing". The caustic soda is rinsed off, and we proceed to the anodising. On the other hand, if the part needs a good visual appearance, more effort is re quired. Care must be taken not to dent or scratch the part during manufacture an d handling. Equip yourself with a set of different sandpaper grades. I use 120, 240, 400, 800, 1200, 1500, 1800, 2000, 2500 and 3000 grit sandpaper in sequence to bring the part to a fine finish. White spirit or paraffin is used to clean th e part before moving onto a higher grade of sandpaper. Finally metal polish can be used to shine the surface.

From here on it is important to wear rubber gloves to stop any grease getting on the part. I will then run the part in a bath of caustic soda for a few minutes and rinse. The part is then dipped into a bath of nitric acid for 20 minutes to remove any residual metals uncovered by the caustic soda bath. Nitric acid is hard to come by, so you might have to resort to the scrubbing method, or just polish off the residue, a green pan cleaner will damaged a highly polished surface. The lye bath will dull the surface somewhat. For really shiny anodising, polish again, and finally wash the part in paraffin and dry to remove any polish residu

al, and then proceed to anodising. The better the finish on the part before anodising, the better the final result. It is of critical importance to wear gloves to keep the part free of moisture o r grease from your hands. A big greasy thumbprint will show up very clearly on t he finished part. Click on images for larger version. rough anodised part with poor surface finish anodised part with medium surfa ce finish an extremely well finished part of anodised aluminium A rough part which has not be polished or sanded. Machining marks are visible, b ut the part is anodised and protected Part was polished before caustic soda ba th but not afterwards. A long period was spent in the dye bath. This was also po lished after the caustic soda bath to get a really good finish The amount of effort you put in must be proportional to the finish actually requ ired. As I said above, do not spend hours working on something nobody is going t o see. Also, consider the utility of the finish. For the inside of a telescope a matt finish is more appropriate. For a vase or decoration, then a highly polish jewel is more appropriate. For final finish, a bit of polish wax will help brin g out the colour on decorative items. Hard Anodizing / Hard Coat Anodize On your travels around the internet you might come across the term "Hard Anodizi ng" or Hard Coat Anodizing. I for one was confused. Surely the whole point of an odising is to make the surface of the aluminium hard? So I presumed for a long t ime that "hard anodising" was just another term to discribe the process of anodi sing aluminium. Recently I learnt that this is not the case. There are infact various types of a nodising. Type I - this is a specialist anodising using chromic or phosphoric acid instead of sulphuric acid,. Type II - this is the anodising that we are familiar with, using sulfuric acid a nd coloured dyes. Type III - this is hard coat anodization, or Hard Anodising. Hard Anodising or Type III anodising uses sulphuric acid again, but a weaker sol ution. The thickness of the anodising coat or 2 to 4 times that of normal type I I anodising. Type 3 is much harder to die because the pores in the anodised laye r are much smaller than in Type II so the die finds it more difficult to penetra te. It often has a dark grey or nearly black colour. Hard anodising is performed with a weaker solution of sulfuric acid, and a lower temperature acid bath. Normally for Type II anodising we have our acid bath aro und 15-20 degrees. The temperature often rises during the anodising process. For type III hard anodizing, the temperature must be only 2-4C. The acid bath must be constantly mixed, otherwise a warm layer of acid will build up around the par ts. The electric current will be much higher, perhaps 20 amps per sq foot. This requires bath mixing machines, cooling equipment and I dunno what else.

I guess the principle is that with Type II anodising, once the layer gets to a c ertain thickness, the reaction is dissolving the anodised layer as fast as it is being made, by keeping the bath very cold, a thicker layer can form. I have not tried hard coat anodising, and, to be honest, I don't think I will, a s there is not much point for my applications and it sounds like a lot of effort .

Large scale DIY anodising with battery acid If you have been doing some DIY anodising with a small anodising bath, there is always a desire to scale things up to enable you to anodising larger and larger parts. The principle problem here is where to get the acid and where to keep it. Online retailers are now very reluctant to sell concentrated sulphuric acid to p rivate individuals, so you have to resort to battery acid. Battery acid can be purchased online in various quantities and is normally quite easy to find. Shipping costs will not make this route cheap, so it is often wis e to ask around local garages, especially motor cycle garages to see if they can supply some. Get ready for some strange looks and questions. One online retaile r I have seen will sell you a 25 litre batch of battery acid for next day delive ry! Battery acid is usually 33% sulphuric acid. To anodise aluminium we need a 20% s ulphuric acid solution. Therefore to every 1 litre of battery acid, we need to a dd 650ml of de-ionised water. Of course, we should never add water to acid alway s add the acid to the water. Do this a bit at a time because it is an extremely exothermic reaction you don t want a vat of boiling acid! The other worry is what to keep it in! One approach is to use plastic picnic cool boxes. These are a nice square shape and fairly strong. The downside is that they are insulated! Anodising large part s will heat up the anodising bath, and we need it to cool down, not be kept in a n insulated box! The next downside is that they do not have an air tight lid. Fi nally, how many times have you need a crack in the inner plastic of a cool box? Lots of times! The inner plastic liner is not that thick, and I d worry that you d p uncture it if you dropped a sharp edged part. Cool boxes are not actually design ed to hold liquids. The best thing is a 5 gallon wine and beer making fermenting bucket. These are m ade from thick food grade plastic and usually have a lid that closes with a mech anical seal no rubber parts to perish in the rubber. These buckets are designed to hold liquid they are designed to hold boiling liquids. The plastic is usually quite thick and designed to hold 25 kilos of water with 6 kilos of sugar dissol ved in it. All wine and beer is acidic, so they cope well with acidity. They als o have handled suited to take that weight! Best of all they usually cost about a tenner!

Go to your local home brew shop and choose the thickest and heaviest bucket they have with a lid, preferably the type without a hole for an airlock. I suggest h alf filling with acid, about 10-15 litres of solution. For this you need around 2 gallons of battery acid. Use this bucket to hold the acid for your anodising bath with no fear that it is going to leak. For extra protection, go and get a plastic storage crate from the DIY store and place the bucket in the plastic crate. If the bucket does leak, you have a secon d backup! All that remains is to find somewhere to keep the bucket of acid. Havi ng so much acid stored in the house is a little worrying, but most of us have a shed we can keep it in. It is worth making a wooden case for the whole anodising bath and putting a lock on it, along with the correct chemical warning symbols. How to anodize titanium - make pretty colors!

Anodizing titanium is childs play compared to aluminium. You don't need any dang erous acids, or fickle dyes, you just need some soap and a bit of electricity. I t only makes a few seconds. Do to complicated molecular reasons, anodised titanium goes a pretty colour. Thi s colour varies with the voltage used. This ranges from gold for about twenty vo lts, via purple and pink at about 100 volts. All you do is make up some electrolyte solution. I use sugar soap, 10 grams per litre. This is bought from the DIY store for cleaning paintwork prior to repaint ing to get the grease off. Find a suitable power supply - use a PC power supply or whatever transfers you'v e got laying about with a rectifier to make up anything between 20 and 100 volts DC. If you are very clever, you can make a variable voltage supply. The exact c olour you get depends on several factors, so experiment :) See the image for an example of a bit of anodised titanium rod. Purple Anodised titanium rod Simply attach +volts to the titanium part, and use a lump of lead sheet submerge d into the solution for the cathode. Clean up your titanium to make it clean of finger grease and dip it in to the solution. After a few moments of fizzing it w ill take on its final colour. That's it! However, there is little use for titanium in the home workshop. We make things o ut of aluminium because it is cheap and easy to machine, and we make things out of steel if they need to be harder or stronger. Titanium is about as light as al uminium and at least as hard and strong as steel - but it is a bugger to machine . However, if you want easy colors, it is the way to go! Sulfuric Acid: The Chemical for Anodising Aluminium Sulfuric acid or Sulphuric acid? How to spell it? It is my understanding that the traditional spelling of "Sulphuric" is with the "ph". However, it now appears that the internationally accepted spelling is now "Sulfuric" with a letter "F" in the middle. I will try to stick to using the let ter F, but may slip occasionally, because, being English, I naturally type Sulph uric. The Chemical formula for Sulfuric Acid Sulfuric Acid is H2SO4. About Sulfuric Acid Sulfuric Acid is a strong mineral acid that can easily be dissolved in water. Wh en adding acid to water, the mixture will become quite hot, and must be left to cool before attempting to anodise. In the old days sulfuric acid was known as "O il of Vitriol" and was probably discovered around the 8th Century. Aside from wa ter, sulphuric acid is perhaps the most commonly manufactured chemical in the wo rld! Sulfuric acid has many uses. Normally we find it inside lead-acid batteries in s olution with water. It's main industrial use is in the production of phosphoric acid. It is also used in papermaking, as a catalyst during production of Nylon, a variety of uses, which, of course, includes anodsing. Sulfuric acid is very nasty stuff, and can be neutralised with an alkali, such a s sodium bicarbonate (found in baking powder).

Where to buy sulfuric Acid Sulfuric acid is not easy to buy. In our society anything that could be used for evil purposes is generally hard to buy! Although commonly found in car batterie s, most retailers are not allowed to sell the acid itself to you. There are a number of online shops that do sell bottles of 98% solution. November 2007: Please note the above suggestion no longer works. It is very diff icult to find anybody selling the chemicals these days. It might be worth talkin g to these guys http://www.caswelleurope.co.uk/ for advise. Also, some places se ll battery acid which should work - I think battery acid needs to be cut 50/50 w ith water to be the right strength for anodizing. for example... Nitric Acid: The Chemical for Preparing and Desmutting Aluminium The Chemical formula for Nitric Acid Nitric Acid is HNO3. About Nitric Acid Nitric Acid is really horrible stuff. In my opinion it is much nastier than sulf uric acid. The bottles I get are a sort of light yellow wee colour. You unscrew the cap, and a visible fume of white vapour comes out the top. Nasty. The yellow colour is due to the oxides of nitrogen forming over time. Really strong nitric acid (over 86%) is known as fuming nitric acid. This can either be white fuming or red fuming depending on how much nitrogen dioxide is present. Nitric acid is used as a lab reagent, and more famously in the making of exposiv es like TNT. It is also popular in making fertiliser, but that is far to dull to go into. I'm always careful with this acid, and keep a lot of alkaline nearby for emergen cies. Where to buy Nitric Acid Nitric acid is not easy to buy. I use an online shop in the uk to buy bottles of 70% solution. They send this stuff through the post? Madness, but I love it! Nitric acid and aluminium anodising: Desmutting The purpose of nitric acid in the aluminium anodising process is not immediately aparent. Nitric acid is used to prepare the surface of the aluminium prior to t he anodising itself.

The first stage in preparing the aluminium for anodising is to clean off the exi sting oxide layer in a bath of caustic soda. This is very exciting and smelly: l ots of frothing and steaming etc. Proper chemistry. Not of this mucking about wi th pathetic bits of litmus paper. After the caustic soda bath, the aluminium is washed. At this point, depending o n the alloy of aluminium used, the surface appears to be covered in smut. Alumin ium is not normally used in the pure form. It is an alloy of many different meta ls. Although the caustic soda removes the aluminium and aluminium oxide, it does

not remove the other metals, and these remain on the surface. Enter the Nitric acid. All these other metals will be dissolved by nitric acid.. but not the aluminium. Therefore, after the caustic soda stage, the part is soa ked in a bath of made of half water and half 70% nitric acid. This cleans up the part lovely. Again, the part is washed in water, and it is ready for anodising. Phosphoric acid: Another Chemical for Aluminium Anodising The Chemical formula for Phosphoric Acid Phosphoric Acid is H3PO4. About Phosphoric Acid Phosphoric acid is yet another colourless mineral acid. Used for rust removal, a nd, also, in the food industry. Most of the acid in Coke cola is phosphoric Acid . It says so on the side of the tin. It has often been suggested that phosphoric acid in soft drinks does nasty stuff to bone density. However, crossing the roa d is dangerous, and we do that every day. Phosphoric Acid in Anodizing Phosphoric acid is used as an anodising bath for anodizing aluminium. A rather t hin coat is used on aircraft and aerospace alloy sheets. It acts as a nice base for the glue to stick the airplanes together, and also has the benefit of resist ing corrosion... always a good thing in airplanes. Where to buy Phosphoric Acid Haven't a clue. It is getting harder and harder to buy chemicals in today's soci ety. These mineral acids are some of the most common industrial liquids produced on the planet, yet, it is almost impossible for an individual to pocess them.