Anodising aluminium

[toodles]

After posting up some pics of my frame here, I've gotten a few PMs about details on the anodising.

There's plenty of anodising places about, and depending on their experience and knowledge they'll range from good to completely useless.

Stripping parts
Firstly, you need to get your frame down to bare metal. The finish is important, as it will affect the final result. The most gentle method of stripping a frame are either paint stripper, acid/stripper dipping and soda-blasting.

Bead blasting or walnut blasting gives a nice brushed/dimpled finish which I guess would look pretty damn cool.

Garnet (so called "sand" blasting) tends to be pretty damn abrasive, so if you go this option, get a reputable operator and make sure they don't thrash the threads or bearing surfaces.

If your part/frame is already anodised, you can strip it with a strong alkali (read the instructions or you wind up blind, blistered or worse yet - wrecking your frame). Some anodising shops can do this for you.

Anodising
There's enough info on the interwebby that you could probably do smaller parts at home. Otherwise, ring around until you find a anodising place that seems to know what they're doing.

The finish of the stripped frame is important to how the anodising will tun out. Matt frame = matt anodising. Bright polished frame = Bright polished anodising. Textured frame = textured anodising. Huffy frame = haha.

The frame needs to be able to be drained or plugged. The Sunday frame I had drained pretty easy through the front end but the back was trickier. Multi-pivot rear ends can be broken down into parts and you can drain them through the welding vent holes. One piece rear ends need to be either rotated (PITA) or drilled to allow easy draining or plugged.

If they don't drain the priming stuff out of the frame, it can make the colour run on the dye stage.

Also worth noting is that the aluminium series affects the final colour. 6000 series will look different to 7000 series.

Make sure you have no dissimilar metals left in your frame. No bearings, bolts, anything that isn't aluminium. The cathodic process will corrode/coat different metals so make sure you only do one metal.

 

[alpinestar12]

Cheers Toodles, that is awesome. Which shop did you get your bike done at?

 

[toodles]

Cheers Toodles, that is awesome. Which shop did you get your bike done at?

A Grade Anodising @ Ormeau. Prices vary for size of the frame and what not. Mine was under $150 all up + stripping.

 

[RaID]

Keep us posted on how the finish lasts compared to the regular sunday paint (which on the 06 is pretty poor) especially from stone impacts on the downtube

 

[Drew.]

A Grade Anodising @ Ormeau. Prices vary for size of the frame and what not. Mine was under $150 all up + stripping.

Oh sweet. I didn't know they did anodizing, too. We use them a lot at work so i'll have a talk to them!

Thanks man! Frame turned out a treat too.

 

[udi]

Oh sweet. I didn't know they did anodizing, too.

With a name like "A Grade Anodising", who would have thought!

 

[jbg]

frame looks sweet! $150.......how does that compare to a good paint job in price?

toodles do those guys have a web site would be keen to see what colours are available

 

[tnankie]

With a name like "A Grade Anodising", who would have thought!

interesting stuff toodles, thanks.

Especially the results of different bare conditions, I didn't know what gave that lovely dimpled/rough and yet sexy smooth finish SC get on their ano jobs. Seems you just rough up the metal a bit.

 

[toodles]

toodles do those guys have a web site would be keen to see what colours are available

Nah pretty sure they don't.

interesting stuff toodles, thanks.

Especially the results of different bare conditions, I didn't know what gave that lovely dimpled/rough and yet sexy smooth finish SC get on their ano jobs. Seems you just rough up the metal a bit.

Yeah I love the SC finish. Kinda what I was after but I'm waaaaay too impatient.

 

[leitch]

Oh sweet. I didn't know they did anodizing, too.

Aah Drew, you never cease to amaze me.


Trent, that has turned up really well. Out of curiosity, how long did the process take? Also, when you say have the frame drained or plugged, what exactly do yo mean by that? What is it that you are saying needs to be drained from the frame?

 

[Ryan]

Oh sweet. I didn't know they did anodizing, too. We use them a lot at work so i'll have a talk to them!

What. The. Fuck. These sort of comments are what make me glad that you're no longer clogging up the school system

 

[leitch]

What. The. Fuck. These sort of comments are what make me glad that you're no longer clogging up the school system

........

 

[floody]

Aah Drew, you never cease to amaze me.


Trent, that has turned up really well. Out of curiosity, how long did the process take? Also, when you say have the frame drained or plugged, what exactly do yo mean by that? What is it that you are saying needs to be drained from the frame?

The priming chemicals I believe. You would either want to be able to drain or flush them out of the frame, or plug it so they don't get in at all.

 

[toodles]

Trent, that has turned up really well. Out of curiosity, how long did the process take? Also, when you say have the frame drained or plugged, what exactly do yo mean by that? What is it that you are saying needs to be drained from the frame?

The priming chemicals I believe. You would either want to be able to drain or flush them out of the frame, or plug it so they don't get in at all.

What Floody said. The etching or priming stuff fuxors the colour, so you can't mix the two. But you need to move the items from the first tank to the 2nd quickly for a good finish. So you need to be able to drain the items quickly and completely.

The process is about 3 hours. Turnaround times vary obviously depending on how busy the shop is and if you've asked for some backarsewards weird colour or something simple like red, black, blue, green. Clear anodising is possible - I've got some stuff here that I got clear anodised for work and it looks schmick.

Hard anodising (25 micron) is done in limited batches and is getting thick enough to fuck with threads and whatnot. Might work best on something not so tolerance critical, like rims, chainrings or handlbars. I don't know if you can hard anodise things in different colours or not.

 

[Jordan!]

Wow Toodles, that looks really clean!
Nice bike and the Anodised rocker just sets it off!
Good on ya.

 

[Randy Rhoads]

Just for people interested in doing it yourself, it isnt easy.

One of my stepdads employees does it and I cant give you an exact figure but his setup cost over $2000 and he can only do things about as big as a 16t cog.

 

[Drew.]

With a name like "A Grade Anodising", who would have thought!

Yeah, we use a group of companies called 'A grade' who specialize in this sort of field, so figures it may be a branch of them. So leitch and ryan, ead.

 

[udi]

Just got mine back today and I got a good pic.
It's definitely darker in the flesh than it looks in the pic though, hard to get an accurate representation with the light reflecting off the matte surface. But if anyone has a boxxer team (with the matte black lowers), the colour, finish, and texture are identical to that.

Soda Blasted:

Anodised:

With Boxxer:

 

[j5ive]

Looks great man. Very nice. SO who did you end up using for both the blast and the ano? And what was the total cost? Did you do anything to the BB threads?

 

[udi]

Thanks... I used the same joint/s as toodles, A-Grade Anodising at Ormeau, and the soda blasting was a joint around there too (not sure of the name, he will though). Honestly though, just flick through the yellow pages or google for some in your area if you want to get something done. Maybe get some small things done first, see how they turn out, and go from there.

Anything that's already anodised, the anodising joint will be able to strip chemically (well this place could), but anything painted or powdercoated will need to be bead or soda blasted beforehand.

Also, it's worth spending some time on the frame before and after blasting. Before blasting, I used some sandpaper (file first where required) to smooth out any scratches that had gone below the paint. Worth moving up to higher grit paper until you've got a nice smooth finish... I got a little lazy (I'd probably spend more time next time) but mine still turned out fine. At the end of the day I guess it's a fuckin' DH bike that's gonna get ripped to shreds on the next shuttle!

After blasting, go over the whole frame with a metal pin or something similar and make sure you get any leftover bits of paint out of the welds or any other nooks and crannies that will be visible, because anything with paint on it won't take dye. Bead blasting probably won't require this step, but soda blasting seems to be very gentle so while it got 99% of the paint off, there were a couple specks left here and there.

Oh and with threads/bearing seats, no need to do anything to them. Normal anodizing (colour/clear) adds jack all thickness, essentially you're left with the same tolerances you had to begin with (when you consider stripping/blasting too). Hard anodizing (like stanchions, shock shafts) on the other hand adds thickness significant enough to mess with thread sizes but there'd be no need for hard ano on a frame.

Hope that helps...