How to Anodise Aluminium at home [how i anodised at home]

hello my name is tina in this video i'll show you how i do aluminium anodizing at home i will anodize these aluminum tool holders but some clips may be also from anodizing disk knob my goal is turn this to something like that there are a lot of information about on google but just in short about anodizing anodizing is some kind of making protection layer on aluminium parts we can do it to it or without adding a color with anodizing process we make tiny holes on aluminium surface then add a collar or not into that tiny holes and seal it back with that process we can get amazingly nice finish and also protect aluminium part science anodized surface is more resistant to mechanical and chemical damage so anodized surface won't scratch that fast and would not become oxidized even outdoor anodized aluminium can find all around us basically every aluminium part remote is anodized because raw aluminium got nice shine right after machining but it's very delicate to scratch and after time it oxidized and become uglier than iron rust there are many ways of anodizing process and lot of details to get the result we want like time temperature solution mixture and so on i don't know but i read somewhere the temperature of solution impact to end shine of anodized surface in this video i show you how i do it at home without special knowledge about anodizing i only read a topic or two on the internet and then learning configures results become useful after 10th or 15th try so just don't give up my result is far from professional anodizing surface isn't that thick and not nearly as scratch proof as industrial one but you can see here the tool i analyzed years ago is still in great shape and that's good enough for me if i need more parts or better result i send the parts to anodizing company anodizing service is quite cheap okay let's start now with the list of things we need for home analyzing we work with very aggressive assets so first of all we need safety equipments glove masks and glasses are very important i get here plastic tweezers to take parts out of acids pot for seal the parts at least three bowls which need to be glasses or plastic and no other material some aluminium wires and rods to connect the parts electrical gauze burner to cook the parts some pigment colors like eatable colors dye colors for clothes or egg colors and so on a container with distillated water i just use the one from clothes dryer and most important acid solutions first one is sodium hydroxide second one is nitric acid and most aggressive sulfuric acid they are no joke with that acid seriously there's a solution i use but some of them can be replaced with others please don't ask me where to buy because every country got a bit different laws about assets i think but h2 so4 can be a bit harder to get i already got mixed assets here so if you buy hundred percent acid you'll need to mix with destinated water and remember a triple a rule always add acid into water and no water into acid sodium hydroxide is five percent solution so there's 95 water nitric acid is 50 solution and sulfuric acid is 20 solution for anodizing we'll need also power supply with setable voltage and current and some wires to connect the parts okay i got everything prepared for analyzing now it's the last options to finish the aluminium parts we can send it with sandpaper polish or whatever just to know analyzing make transparent surface so if there's a tiny scratch on the part it will be visible also after anodizing i got already prepared parts so i just blow them with compressed air and wipe it with alcohol next step is connect the part to aluminium wire or rod i see a lot of people just hang the part to aluminium wire but it didn't work for me it just lose electrical connection between wire and part and the middle of process so i need to repeat from beginning if there at least one treat i use the rod retreat screw the part on and tie it well work carry time spot welder may be good also but you need to know that on spot where the wire or rods touch the part will not be anodized so attach it it's a hidden place on the part parts are now finished cleaned and fixed on aluminium rod so you can put safety equipment on and from here you don't touch part with bare hands anymore now the first step is to edge the part to do that simply soak the part into 5 sodium hydroxide for about 10 to 30 minutes it will clean the surface of aluminium more time you soak into acid more aluminum will be etched if you soak for too long some small treat like m2 can be damaged so smaller treat cut after anodizing when the parts is into sodium hydroxide you should see in something like that the bubbles should going off the part all the time and the acid become dirtier mine is already used a few times so it becomes yellow during the process you can shake the part here and there so you remove some catched bubble which prevent contact between acid and part after about 20 minutes i take the part out of sodium hydroxide and rinse into the estilated water as you see the parts become completely black it depends on aluminium alloy type some types of aluminium become completely black while other not at all now it's time for step two prepare the container with nitric acid and sew the part into but make sure you rinse them with water never put the part directly from one to other acid every time rinse the part with water nitric acid will remove the black film on the part instantly but you can leave it soaked for a minute then again rinse the part with water and you should see something like that nicely wide edged aluminium part sodium hydroxide make nice surface on aluminium if i soak it for about an hour all the traces from milling will disappear but all the measures of part will change also rinse with water again and then prepare the container for step three into plastic or glass container put some cattle you can use some wires or any aluminium part i just cut some sheets of aluminium which fit into my container a piece of sheet come out of containers so i can connect the wire on now take the part out of water and hang it into container be careful so the part won't touch the bottom of container or the cat out i also tilt it apart a bit so the air bubbles can rise up if some bubbles stuck on the part spot will not be analyzed we can prevent that with air pump so it makes the solutions and bubbles to get more evenly anodized layer but i don't use that after we get part in its position we can pure sulfuric acid into container make sure that the acid is covered apart to anodizing and that the part won't touch the bottom of container or cathode now plug the power supply and set the voltage to about 12 volts negative wire connect to cathode and positive to anode i anodized two parts at once so i use two positive wires each connected to one rod as i say there are many details in anodizing one of them is current which is calculated by some formula which includes surface size of part we want to analyze but i simply limit current to 1 amp which is effective and not too high so it heat up the acid if everything is ok we should see tiny bubbles slowly going from the part or anode and a bit bigger bubbles from a cutoff leave like that for about an hour more time you'll analyze more thick the anodized layer will be if bubbles stop going from the part it mean that you lose connection between the part and positive wire during process you can shake a few times to release all the catch bubbles if possible make that step outside because while anodizing some acid evaporate into air and when drop on some steel surface it will rust so if you do that workshop like i do protection mask is a must and cover the container to stop evaporating open window also help that asset is a hell so don't even think to touch it with bare hand and if you drop to the clothes it make hole in few minutes after about half an hour of analyzing i checked the temperature of solution it got 26 degrees celsius which is okay if temperature goes over 40 degrees celsius it will up evaporate faster and it can crystallize and become useless as i said that process should last about an hour but this time i'll try with only 35 minutes so the analyzed layer will be thinner turn off the power supply disconnect the wires and rinse the parts with water again after anodizing process the part lose its shine and got a bit whiter color next step is coloring if you want natural color of anodizing skip that part and continue its sealing proper way of coloring is that you prepare container of destinated water with mixed color pigment and then soak the part until we get the color we want we can use many colors to do that one of them is red dye colors for clothes or the powder egg color i hear that the colors for refill printers also are great but i got the best result with using eatable airbrush colors which is liquid and got a lot of tiny pigment inside more time is soaked apart into colored water more intense the color will be we can see here if i just soak a bit the part is lightly colored if that's the result we want just seal into water but if you want to get more intense color soak for about 30 minutes tiny holes into parts which we make with analyzing attract more color pigment so the color will look more intense deeper darker whatever but i like that liquid color because i can speed up that process by simply pure a few drops of color direct into part and so it become fully colored in a moment after you got wanted color boil some fresh water and put the part into for a few minutes to boiling some color will disappear or it'll become a bit lighter but that's normal actually i do coloring and sealing and same step because i got better result firstly put some distillated water in a pot and start heating then peel a few drops of color directly into part and then just put a part into hot water and when the parts start boiling leave it for a few minutes it's easier because we escape one step and it i got better result if sealing colored water with anodizing we make tiny holes on surface of aluminium into coloring step color pigment stuck into that hose and with ceiling which is simply cooking the part into boiling quarter we close the holes back so the holes will close and catch the color pigment into and the part get it shine back that's it after that rinse and cool the part with water and then wipe excess color with a towel you can also slightly polish if you want more shiny part if something went wrong just return to step one and sodium hydroxide will remove any other lysine also industrial one but solution will become dirty so i got special container of sodium hydroxide for removing old anodizing i really like that playing with colors we can make wide spectrum of colors with only one color from light to dark i try also edible colors in a base shape all work nice except black one so far in all these years i can get a nice black anodizing because black color doesn't exist but it's just mixture of fully other colors so in my case the part only take red pigment out of black color but while making this video i'll try something new just for fun i mixed red blue and black color soak the part into and cook i couldn't believe while i pulled out nice deep black part one more thing if you need more parts exact same color do it all together anodize them together and color them together so you do everything exact same amount of time either way there is no way to get same color twice that's it about anodizing aluminium at home i make my holders a few different colors anodizing is far from perfect but i really happy with the result hope you enjoyed the video and learned something new for the end i make the last detail on my holders by engraving them with direct lasers if you didn't seen already you're welcome to watch the video about making that holders thanks for watching like share and subscribe if you like and see you next time [Music] you

Channel: TinC33

Views: 78,042

Keywords: tinc, tinc33, DIY, how, aluminium, anodise, anodising, anodised, anodizing, layer, colour, paint, protect, parts, chemical, anode, catode, power

Id: toGB1Mra2mU

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022