Do it yourself anodize
 

With all the lil aluminum parts on crawlers and rc in general, I have always wanted to be able to do my own stuff. With a lil googling and a lot of reading I finally did it.
I recently got my AX10 and the first thing I did was to get rid of the horrid green. After some truck testing I noticed that once the aluminum was stripped of the anodize it actually hung up more cuz bare aluminum is softer than anodize. So I figured now was a good time to do some testing.......
With a battery charger, some battery acid and some Rit dye, I set out.
It worked well If I must say, I wanted a gold to goldish orange and that is what I got.
If you want to do your own just google "how to anodize" and read, A LOT!
This stuff can be dangerous and explosive. Now on to anodize the rest of her!

I feel a "How to" thread coming on!"thumbsup"

B-A-U-TFUL! Man I want to know how to do that......Come on Share your wisdom oh great color guru.:lol:

Im glad you likey. I will do another run tomorrow and take lots of pics and show you how its done. It only cost me about 20 bucks for everything, but i do realize I need a insulated lunch box as my anodize tank as its 40degrees in my garage and temp of the acid has to be between 68 and 73. I will post up tomorrow bud, no worries.

Nice... I used to do that to may BMX parts in California when I was a kid but I haven't been able to find the acid here in Utah... at least found anyone that would sell me some. it is VERY easy... but yeah it can be dangerous

Awesome!!!
Definitely post up a detailed how-to on your method. I NEED to anodize some stuff and for $20 I would much rather do it myself!;-)

I just googled "how to anodize" and came up with this: http://www.thirdgen.org/anodizealuminum
I have done it before years ago in a high school chemistry class, and it worked great. Some buddies and I anodized some of our old climbing gear.

Yep, thats the exact link I used for my stuff as well. Pretty much tells ya everything you need to know. And for RC stuff you dont need a big setup. I am now using a small insulated lunch box as my tank. Heating the acid now for another run.
But fried my battery charger last night when I set it to 50amps. In lil writing on the back it says to only use the 50amp setting for 30 seconds or less. OOOPS.
Oh well got a couple old PC power supplies laying around with 17amps off the 12v lead. Should be more than enough for the lil parts Im doing. Made some new leads for it and as soon as acid is up to temp Im good to go again.

Oh and by the way. I would never do climbing gear. I am a climber myself. I live 20 minutes from Smith Rock. The anodizing process is actually a controlled corrosion and can reduce overall strength. Especially if there is a crack already in the peice. Just my .02

yeah, now that I am older and wiser, I wouldn't do is either, but the binners that I did held up well for what they were used for around here. I live 1 hour from the reed river gorge, and it was mainly sport climbing, but like I said, Older/wiser now, and never again"thumbsup"

How do you remove the green off the AX10?

wow.. think ill leave that one to the pros. dont feel like playin with acid.

You can use oven cleaner. I did this years ago on an old t-maxx chassis. I don't know what happened to all of that stuff. It isn't a hard process if you just be mindful of the safety.

Another great thing to remove it is to get some grease lighting spray cleaner and soak it in it for a few minutes. I learned this the hard way then the following week I seen an article in the Car Action saying how the Grease Lighting removes the anodized color. Bummer I was just trying to clean my Jammin X1 CR after a big race. so now it is very shinny I have polished it.

hahah I love it when I discover stuff by accident ...except for some of course:roll:

Sweet thread. I am going to try and do my chassis and all of the aluminum parts in an orange and black motife. this is going to help out alot.

Jesse

if i can remember right xrc did an article of diy anodizing i will look through my books and see if i still have it. the mag was from last year

http://astro.neutral.org/anodise5.shtml

This is a pretty good website too. Thanks for that other link, have it bookmarked now.

ok i may have to give that a try tracer chassis in color hmmmmmmm lol

This is great, Is anyone doing a how-to with pic.s? That would help a lot

My brother in law and I did this a few years back. There are dyes that work much better than Rit and will last longer. None of the home-boy stuff would hold it's color in the sun. Some clearcote will help for a while ,but it still fades pretty fast.

I read the title and I thought GOLD PARTS :D