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

[routercnc]

Nice work Zeeflyboy. That food dye test bodes well.
I’ve gone for eau naturelle finish but will be following with interest.

[Zeeflyboy]

Got a few hours to play this afternoon at long last!

Whipped up a little design out of some scrap plywood to finish off the anodising tank and cathode/anode setup.












Off on holiday now, so that little bit of work didn't last long.

[Zeeflyboy]

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!

[Zeeflyboy]

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.

[Nickhofen]

Ferrari red! : )

[AlexDoran]

Fantastic

[Zeeflyboy]

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.

[Lee Roberts]

Anxiously waiting for an update on this build 😁

[Shinya]

This build goes from debate thread to pure engineering art and visual satisfaction is just joy to watch. Hopefully you can share the complete design with us in the future, I say that your work on the design itself worth the money and I’ll be more than happy to pay for it :)
cheers

[I_Wanna_CNC]

Where is Zeeflyboy these days? HIs build seems to have come to an end.