DIY Anodizing

The fine folks at Aerosport Power are building an engine for me and were kind enough to ship me the pushrod tubes for polishing and anodizing. This was my first foray into Anodizing, so I opted to go the "buy a kit" route from Caswell Plating. I found a power supply on Craig's list so saved a bit there.

Here's the pushrod tubes before (on the right):


And after:


Apparently the kit is pretty complete, because even I didn't manage to mess it up!

Nice One!

Mike,

You made a good job of those parts from what I can see from the photos.
Can you you let us know the cost of the anodising kit.

I found this link on the web explaining the process.



Cheers

Anthony

Wow, red pushrod tubes, that looks realy cool. I got mine chromed and polished the intake tubes (stainless steel) to a mirror finish. Wish I had known I could have coloured my pushrod tubes, coz my motor is painted Candy Apple Red.

Very nice!!! I never even thought of doing anything beyond crome. Something new to think about(on top of the thousands).

Steve Stella
#40654 Wings
N521RV reserved

Cost breakdown

islandmonkey said:

You made a good job of those parts from what I can see from the photos.
Can you you let us know the cost of the anodising kit.

Click to expand...

The kit was $349.
Red Bordeaux 2R Dye $31
Some shipping $???
Power supply $65 (plus $25 for gas to drive to Akron to get it...gah)
Visqueen, casters, and outlets for the cart (I already had the wood) $35

So I've probably got a total of $500 or a bit more into it. More than I wanted, but when I balanced this against all the parts I want to anodize and the $75 minimum fee of my local shop, I figure it's probably around a break-even proposition. The big reason I like doing it myself is that I'm in full control of the color, so all the pieces should match.

Some of the additional parts for anodize will be:
Aluminum fitting on intake tubes (I polished the stainless tubes, too
Brake pedals
Firewall control cable eyes
Baffling
Main gear wheel nuts.

You can even change the color of already anodized parts by stripping the previous anodize off and reanodizing. I've already got the firewall control cable eyes stripped and need to reanodize them. I might also do the Stein vents that way.

That is awesome! What kind of power supply is needed for this? Wonder if a Radio Shack 12v regulated power supply would work...

I have done quite a bit of anodizing using a 12 v car battery, charger, battery acid and a plastic trash can. Don't think I had much in it at all, only have to buy the dye. You can learn how by goggling DIY anodizing--that's how I learned. Other than having to be quite careful of the acid, it is really easy. The ribs in my wings and tail are all anodized, along with lots of other small parts.

Bob Kelly

I'd be careful about anodizing thin structural parts like ribs and baffles. The anodizing makes the surface hard and brittle. On thick cross-sectional parts that's OK, but not so much on < 0.03 thin stuff. I anodized my engine baffles and have had numerous cracks that all started at rivet holes. And I deburred all the holes before anodizing. In hindsight, it was a bad idea.

Heinrich Gerhardt
RV-6, 320 hours or so

Looks awesome!

Mike,

Those pushrod tubes turned out nice! I love the red!

Can't wait to see them on that engine!

Getting out of hand?

Thanks for the nice comments. However, I'm afraid this anodizing thing might be getting a bit out of hand. I went ahead and anodized the aluminum fittings on the (newly polished) intake pipes as well. I know it's silly to do stuff like this that's going to be hidden under the cowling, but geez, I can't help myself. Probably why I'm still building rather than flying. Sigh.

nice.

BTW-nothing wrong with making it pretty.

You need to create a video and put it on youtube......

I've been searching for a video that describes the process and equipment, but can't seem to find out.

It appears that you're just starting to figure it out.

Seriously though, I'd love to see the equipment and process in video. Nice work.

mcencula said:

Thanks for the nice comments. However, I'm afraid this anodizing thing might be getting a bit out of hand. I went ahead and anodized the aluminum fittings on the (newly polished) intake pipes as well. I know it's silly to do stuff like this that's going to be hidden under the cowling, but geez, I can't help myself. Probably why I'm still building rather than flying. Sigh.

Click to expand...

I'm not surprised to see such great results from you, Mike. You do excellent work and will have a gorgeous airplane when it's all done. I do believe that when you're done, you could build another RV-7 with all of the scrap in your pile. It just won't have those fancy red parts on the engine.

After reading this thread and seeing these beautiful results, I started cruising the internet and came up with this link:
http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/aluminum.htm.

I don't know anything about it but they offer a DVD...

Bob