Gary, (or anyone else who has done anodizing)

I've done a bunch of research on different forums, but your experience/feedback would be appreciated as your experience is directly related to our sport/hobby.

No trade secrets necessary like your multicolor, but I'm getting ready to try my hand at anodizing and thought I'd ask if you put together your own setup or started with a commercially available "kit" like Caswell offers?

Any recommendations for power supplies, heaters, etc

Thanks, Don

Hi Don,

Good luck with it.

I made my tanks as I needed long tanks for shrouds, etc.

I bought a huge battery charger, like an automotive garage would use.

Google ... and you'll find a few sights that will show you their set-ups and give pretty thorough tips. I did ruin too many expensive parts learning. Hate that learning curve.

Gary

commercial anodizing specific chemicals? or the readily available lye, battery acid, fabric dyes that the DIY forms promote?

How do you regulate voltage/amperage? I've seen everything from lightbulb bars to rehostat switches?

I plan on getting comfortable w/ "scrap bin" parts before putting labor intensive machined pieces into the process. Hopefully minimize number of messed up parts.

Hello Don,

It's entirely too complex a process to give a thumbnail in this format. You'll need to read every reference material on the process you can find (Google), then adapt to the parts you can find/make.

I didn't ruin good parts because I didn't have any scraps handy ... . I ruined them because, the process isn't fool proof. It changes. What worked ten times before, didn't this time. To take the varible factors out of it, you need as close to a boni-fide factory set-up as you can assemble. Otherwise, you need to pay infinite attention to every possible detail, and have alot of dumb luck.

If you start reading reference pages that make it sound like it's as easy as building a spud gun, move on to the ones that make your head hurt. They'll tell you what you need to know.

Gary