El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

Didn't buy a kit - it's all home-brew I'm afraid... I can perhaps do a more detailed post on all the equipment/stages if there is interest?

Problem in the UK is that they have now made it pretty much impossible to buy or possess battery acid/sulphuric acid without a special license, so if anything happens to my anodising solution I'm a bit stuffed (thankfully I bought and mixed my bath before the ban). It would be legal to sell it in concentrations less than 15% which is still more than needed for the LCD process I'm using... but I haven't seen anyone doing that yet. I have seen some people having good success using Sodium Bisulphate (NaHSO4) which is readily available as a pool PH adjuster, but there is much less info out there. In theory it should be similar to sulphuric acid anodising (it's sulphuric acid + a sodium base) but I have no idea if there is any downside to eg the durability of the coating. It is something I may have to experiment with at some point to ensure I can keep anodising for a long time!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy

Didn't buy a kit - it's all home-brew I'm afraid... I can perhaps do a more detailed post on all the equipment/stages if there is interest?

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I am interesting,lol!
If you have the patience and time of course!

Ok, I'll try and do a more detailed dive at some point.

So something something no time for test parts? lol.

I done gone goofed - anodised the bearing top plate today trying the other dye.... it was meant to come out a nice dark gunmetal grey but it is actually as black as the night. I left it in the dye bath 10 mins like with the red dye, which clearly was far too long.

Wife told me it looks good that way and I should just do the whole thing red/black. What do you guys think?

Brushed finish with purple scotch pads.

https://i.imgur.com/6pQsMCc.jpg


Bubble bubble

https://i.imgur.com/07ioekM.jpg


That ain't grey....

https://i.imgur.com/WgrLxBa.jpg


Fitted pics - what do you think? Just go for all black?

https://i.imgur.com/u34W2h6.jpg

Black and red looks dope.

Looks good to me!
Attachment 24897

Yeah it does look good and is growing on me. Saw it in the daylight today and it does look nice...

Next time I get a chance to play I will anodise a scrap piece to 0.6 mil and see how that looks, I suspect at 1mil the dye colour is just too strong and causing the blackness but the only way to be sure is to try!

Oh and speaking of daylight, I got a better picture that is more representative of how the red looks in person - you can sort of see the deep metallic sheen here... must say I love the colour.

https://i.imgur.com/pKLc4B1.jpg

Ferrari red! : )

Fantastic

Thought I would do one more experiment based on a suggestion from dharmic, I took 0.5L of my already-mixed-to-instructions dye and diluted it with a further 1.5L of DI water... so waaaay more dilute than specified. The part being anodised was my tensioner roller, I anodised as before with 6amps/sqft to a theoretical thickness of 1mil and then used the diluted dye at 60 degrees celsius followed by a nickel acetate seal.

Any guesses as to the colour?

BLAAAAAACK.

So as far as I can tell, with my particular setup/dye/pixie dust, grey is pretty much impossible for me to achieve.


https://i.imgur.com/awTJdlv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/KVX1jie.jpg