Controlled Anodizing With an Electro Chemical Etcher

Jonathans

Jonathans

Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Messages
588
I might be putting the horse before the cart here. I am just now tooling up to make a Ti framelock folder, and it will be my first folder. I ran across some titanium anodizing videos which captivated my imagination.
Looks pretty simple and straight forward.
Now, I already own a Marking Methods Mark 300 etcher. I think the power setting rheostat controls the amperage. How would I go about controlling the DC voltage for different colors?
 
That unit has a 30volt max output from what I read - for anodizing you'll need a good bit more voltage than that.
 
you can get into blue but 30 volt max is an issue plus the amp draw will be high with folder sized Ti hunks
 
I use a 0-120vdc/0-1 amp supply for my anodizing. It gets me the full range of colors on pieces much larger than folder sized.

~Chip
 
A variac, bridge rectifier,a few switches, and a DC voltmeter will get you going for anodizing. Ebay has them all.
A Variac ( variable AC transformer) is also called a powerstat or a variable transformer. You don't need a big high amp unit for anodizing, so there is no need for the $100 units. A $30-60 unit will do fine. I see 1 amp units on Ebay for as low as $20.
Old model RR train controls often have a great variac you can buy for cheap. I bought a box of train controls and RR junk for $25 that had three good powerstats in it.

OT:
Is this thing cool or what!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-Adj...896627?hash=item238565ccb3:g:WWwAAOSwX61ZKCyp

In my old electric/electronic workshop, I had a giant Variac unit for adjusting the power feed to motors. It was circa 1900. I hauled it out of an old building being torn down in the 60's. In my shop, it was merely a decoration, because the old cotton wrapped wires were so ratty ( literally and figuratively) it would be fireworks if you put power to it. The unit weighed around three hundred pounds and had a foot long crank that drove gears to turn the core. There was a brass dial with 0-100 and a pointer. It took one turn to move the pointer one digit. It had big meters for voltage and amps. On one side was a big rectifier block to make DC. IIRC, it handled 100 amps. There were separate terminals for AC and DC output.
In the early days of electricity, there was AC and DC power (Westinghouse vs Edison), both were generated by local generators ( sometimes several in the same town) and the power feed could vary a lot from place to place. Some cities had both current types on the power poles.Most motors ran on only one or the other, but some smaller motors were "universal" and could run on either. Since the power supply could vary in voltage as well as frequency, motors could run hot and burn out sooner if the power wasn't adjusted. Since most motors had brushes, some could be speed controlled by varying the power, too.
The power room of a machine shop or other place with motors that needed a certain speed had these big variable transformers to adjust the building power to an exact voltage. The person in charge of the power room would adjust it every day as needed.
A guy was visiting my place one day and saw it. He offered me $500 for it ... and I helped him load it in his truck.
 
I love stories of old
I recall hearing one town around here used to have 30hz power instead of the typical 60. Long before my time, but apparently it made light bulbs quite irritating.
 
IIRC, DC was still in use in a few small towns in the US until the 1940's. As you pointed out, frequency was 30, 50, and 60 before standardizing to 60Hz.

While the brain can only process about five to ten images a second and understand what it sees, it is still seeing images as separate frames up to around 50HZ, which is the visual recognition threshold. An incandescent light running on 30Hz may look like a single glow, but the brain sees the flicker.. Light flickering above 50Hz is seen as a steady glow. Lights running on 30 hertz sometimes caused seizures in people.
 
Stacy, per this Wikipedia link: https://goo.gl/i9VaRD

Parts of Boston, Massachusetts along Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue still used 110 volts DC in the 1960s..... with the last DC commercial power distribution system in the United States was decommissioned in 2007

Can you imagine using DC power for the house?
 
Stringing together 9v batteries does a great job of anodizing Titanium. Watch this super short video, and just add more batteries to adjust the voltage. You can actually get most of the main colors with this method, but you can add AA battery packs if you need to fine tune the voltage.

 
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