Home Anodizing Set-up

[TomG]

The chemicals are due in tomorrow so I've been pushing hard to get the tanks finished for the weekend. Tonight I drilled the air holes in the bubblers and tested one of them live. The WAG on the drill size and number of holes looks to be about right. I used a #70 drill and put five holes in on each side of the manifold. As you can see, there is more than enough agitation to keep things stirred up, in fact too much. But there are at least eight more to hook up, so it will calm down a bit. At least it looks like the pump I chose is going to be big enough. There's nothing like seat of the pants fluidics.



Here's a pic of the tanks sitting in the bench. From left to right is the cleaner, etch and anodizing tanks, with the dye tanks above. Now that I know these tanks are going to work out, I'll order another batch of them to occupy the rest of the slots for future dye additions.



This is the scary part: I stopped and picked up the sulfuric acid on the way home from work tonight. Now there is five gallons of it sitting in my shop. I definitely need to get the bench finished with the sealed top and forced ventilation. The machines are hard enough to keep from rusting as it is.