DIY Metal Finishing - Plating - Anodizing

[lmw94002]

I wanted to start a thread to collect some advice, experiences, suggestions, etc from everyone's experience with working on the "metal pieces" of the RC cars.

Cleaning, Scratch Repair, Polishing, Plating, Coating, Anodizing... What does your setup look like? What's your process? Lessons Learned?

I've started to explore refinishing the metal bits of my RC10 DS project. I did a bath, bake, and quench on some steel ti-rods that look decent to me for a start. Looking at some DIY nickel plating and even trying some DIY anodizing. It really doesn't look to difficult (or even that expensive) to try... just a question of getting a process that gives decent results.

[300D50]

OOOH!

Brain-dump time for me!

For aluminum, you'll need some TSP for the pre-cleaning, sodium hydroxide for the de-smut/strip, sulfuric acid for the electrolyte bath, distilled water for final cleaning, and a big honking power supply to run the works.

Titanium can be anodized with either TSP or borax as the electrolyte, and you vary the voltage to get your desired film thickness.

Aluminum parts need to be boiled after anodizing, either in the dye solution, or in distilled/deionized water, to close the pores.

You can do most of it using commodity lab glassware available on Amazon, and it's not too hard to do.

RIT fabric dye in high concentration can be used to color anodized aluminum parts, but may produce a less consistent finish than commercial dyes.

Just make sure you deal with waste products responsibly, aluminum and TSP aren't the best for lawns, aquifers, or septic tanks.

General procedure:

Clean part with TSP solution, wearing gloves, to remove any/all oils.

Rinse with deionized/distilled water.

Soak in sodium hydroxide de-smut solution to etch surface slightly, and strip back natural oxide coatings/alloying metals at surface boundary.

Rinse with distilled/deionized water.

Anodize in acid bath for desired time/current, to obtain desired oxide layer thickness.

Rinse with deionized/distilled water.

Boil in distilled/deionized water, or dye solution, to close pores.

End brain dump.

[klavy69]

Cool...Walt can offer up his alloy stealth colors in anno'd colors now

Todd

[300D50]

Dang it, the frog's out of the nalgene bottle now!

[RC10th]

Anyone remember Bad Boys Anodizing? How would they get the crazy marbled anodizing?

[RC10th]

Yes, I found an add in one of my old magazines. If I remember their green and pink marble was pretty wild.

[lmw94002]

Some results for cleaning up some old dog bones. I was testing on some dinged up ones. I think some better cleaning/prep and surface work could have better results especially with the plating.

Both cleaned (vinegar bath, washed and degreased), heated to 450 for 20 min and oil quenched (vegetable oil). Gave a pretty nice and smooth dark finish. In light, some parts did have a faint brown tint. Then I cleaned one up again and did a simple nickel plating in my DIY setup with just some jewelry cleaner/polish. Up close you can see the imperfections but at first glance or a short distance they do look shiny.

[lmw94002]

Actually took a little time to prep, clean, nickel plate and polish some DS dogbones. Results are pretty decent. Stating the obvious, but the time put into the prep dramatically impacts the quality of the finished product.

Step 1 - Cleaned

Step 2 - Plated

Step 3 - Polished

[lmw94002]

My best result trying some home anodizing. Just testing with RC10 wing and nose tubes...

[slotcarrod]

Actually took a little time to prep, clean, nickel plate and polish some DS dogbones. Results are pretty decent. Stating the obvious, but the time put into the prep dramatically impacts the quality of the finished product.

Step 1 - Cleaned
IMG_1.JPG
Step 2 - Plated
IMG_2.JPG
Step 3 - Polished
IMG_3.JPG

If you don't mind sharing, what was your exact process for the nickle plating?

[lmw94002]

To over simplify the way I did it...

1) Make a nickel acetate solution. Can be purchased or it can be created with vinegar and a pure source of nickel. I made mine (requires power supply).
2) Clean the crap out of the part. I acid washed them, dremel wire brush, chemical degreaser too, rinsed, dried and polished w/ dremel.
3) Then you hang the part in the nickel acetate solution and connect up a power supply, one pole to the part, and another to a piece of sacrificial nickel.

The art is in making the solution and then finding the best current/voltage powersupply and length of time for the process. Very similar to anodizing, but easy to do IMO. Remember it only works on steel parts, not aluminum. I haven't tried a threaded steel ti-rod yet to see how bad the playing gums up the threads though, but it's on the to-do list.

For me it was really no cost other than finding a source of nickel because I had stuff laying around that I could use. Youtube has a few videos I watched to help get me going.

[lmw94002]

Just wanted to add a few pics of things I've been able to do in the Anodizing Department. Still working on being able to consistently reproduce results, but I'm making progress.

Titanium Anodizing...

Aluminum Anodizing