Toolhorder
Well-known member
I have some cylinder heads for a motorcycle that are vintage and were originally anodized gold. Some dumb dumb decided to bead blast that off and make them alum. finish again. Anyone know a good/cheap anodizing company?
Cheap anodizing option?
- Thread starter Toolhorder
- Start date
darkk
Well-known member
You can do it yourself with a kit. Just buy the supplies from some place like http://www.caswellplating.com and I'm sure you could come up with or build a power supply unit.
machine_punk
Well-known member
DARKK beat me to it...anodizing isn't that hard to do or too expensive. Something I definitely intend to add to my garage at some time. Plenty of resources online for materials and for what others have done for anodizing setups (look for the site where the guy uses food coolers as his tanks.)
M_P
M_P
OP
Toolhorder
Well-known member
Yeah I figured but does it look pro status when you're done?
Walterchang
Well-known member
Alodine? We do stuff in the shop all the time. Plus it turns aluminum gold.
bhalv
Well-known member
I'll second the alodining, kinda hard to get a consistent color though
digdug18
Well-known member
The only real problem I see with this would be the polishing, provided you aren't looking for a matte finish. After you put the heads in the stripper tank, you need to polish the heads, all the nooks and crannies are going to cost you a pretty penny to get polished before they get anodized. You might look into some of the same companies that anodize paintball guns, as they do colors often and usually have the process down pat.
Andrew
Andrew
38Chevy454
Well-known member
Anodizing is clear, and the sealer used over the anodize surface is what give it color. All anodizing is in simplest terms is a thicker aluminum oxide layer than you can get by normal reaction. Alodine is just chemical reaction, and has chromate in the bath that gives the yellow color. Anodize is electrically driven process to prduce a thicker layer. Plain anodize without sealing is used on a lot of alum parts prior to painting, especially in aerospace. Putting a sealer makes it have the extra corrosion resistance. The sealer can be clear or colored.
OP
Toolhorder
Well-known member
This is the color they are suppose to be,
OP
Toolhorder
Well-known member
I just pulled that pic off the web. Those are for an R5 Yamaha (basically a piston port RD350 2 stroke engine)
The ones I have are for an RD400. I'm either going to polish them to a mirror finish (very time consuming and hard where the fins get narrow or recoat them)
Might just be better to take them to a plater. I want them ****