I thought you can’t anodize yoyos white? I thought you could only do clear coat, which is like the color of a raw yoyo
No such animal as white ano. For those who want to say there is and point to the overseas white ano it is technically not anodization.
Yep, that’s paint.
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The only two options for white are paint or powder coat. Send it to Italy, if memory serves, for an outrageously overpriced sort of white not really ano!
I think the white that’s overseas is really actually etching, best bet is a powder coat.
Here are my first results. I have to say I am pretty happy with them. I have several handles that I wanted to anodize for work. The top part is a raw aluminum handle with a glass bead blast. This is what the middle part looked like before I anodized it. The middle one and bottom part were both anodized at the exact same time with the same settings. The color difference is due to the bar not being bead blasted.
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Anodizing-First-Attempt.jpg
And here are the technical specs
Anodize Stripper - 5 minutes
Desmut - 5 minutes
Anodize for 120 minutes @ 0.6 amps, 70°F
Dye - Caswell’s ‘Fast Blue’, 15 minutes, 140°F
Sealer - 15 minutes, 200°F
I rinsed the parts in distilled water before changing tanks. I used a digital K Type 0-1300C Thermocouple Probe Temperature Sensor and a multimeter to check the temperatures of the tanks, except for the anodizing tank which I used a glass thermometer.
I want to build a nice wooden rack to hold all the buckets and I think I will use some of that spray insulation to insulate some of the buckets that need to be heated. If I wrap the bucket in plastic wrap for then I should be able to remove the buckets without any problem. I think I will eventually get some more temperature sensors and use an arduino to monitor all the buckets temp at the same time and have it display it to a LCD screen. Then maybe tie that into a control system to control the heaters to get very stable temperatures. But that might be over kill. I will start with building a shelf.
Looking forward to your comments guys,
Josh
What’s the size for the bead?
Damn I wish I had some raw yoyos for you lol
If we sent you something raw, would you bead blast it for us?
Lol, I have been wanting to get my Lunarwind prototype beadblasted and clear anoed…
Soda blasted then ano’d…
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3701/9037936736_8ceb5d5159_c.jpg
IMG_20130612_091726_865 by mullicabob, on Flickr
I know, and I have drooled…
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Double trouble!
Thanks for the mostly positive reviews. 
It would not be one of my threads if there was not a little tension. I figure that means I must be doing something right if people care enough. Even though I rarely charge for my work here, I have to say I think my work is worth more than a dollar. 
I am planning to do some more anodizing tonight. I have some more parts for work that I want to try. If I have some time I will even try out the RIT dye on some scrap aluminum just for a comparison. I also will be laser etching some of my anodized parts this week so I will take some photos of that too. Finally, I have been reading about acid splashing and using vinyl decals to mask off sections. So that is coming up in the near future. Also, as soon as I get some other Caswell anodizing dye I am going to try making custom colors by mixing them together. So stay tuned for more fun to come.
As for me doing blasting, I have access to sand blasting cabinet and have used that for some of the powder coating work I did in the past. I think the media in that is too coarse for yoyo work. It could be swapped to glass bead, but that is a fair bit of work and I have to swap it back when I am done. So for me to do that for 1 or 2 yoyos just doesn’t make sense. I have looked into getting my own soda blaster or sand blaster. The major cost is the air compressor. Just to be clear I am not opposed to doing blasting. But before I invested the money in the equipment, I would like have some anodizing jobs lined up. My work actually has a air compressor, and now that I am starting to anodize work parts it might make sense to get a small glass bead blasting cabinet set up at my work. So that might be an option in the future.
So I am gonna hold off on the equipment until I see how things go. I just invested $800 into this anodizing set up and only about $200 of that was from yoyo related work that I did. Hopefully the anodizing set will get me a few jobs locally as well as on this forum. %100 of what I earn doing this kind of work goes right back into equipment to offer everyone here more options. I really appreciate you all supporting me as I learn and I hope that you guys appreciate me offering my time and skills to you. I continue to do this because you all have been very positive and supportive. That is what makes it fun for me.
Thanks,
Josh
Another small update guys. Here is a picture of what I did the past couple days.
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/photo-5.jpg
The top part is the one that I showed you previously. I did some more reading and I think I was setting the current too low. So I did some calculations to figure out the surface area of my parts. I was lucky and had the 3d models for this handle so I can just look it up. Then I plugged those values into Caswell’s online calculator and it gave me a current that was more than double what I used the first time. So I tried it out and the results look even better. This is the middle part. It is kind of hard to take good photos of this stuff. But I can tell you this part looks much better.
Anodize Stripper - 10 minutes (I stripped off anodizing I did previously and failed, so it took longer)
Desmut - 5 minutes
Anodize for 120 minutes @ 1.6 amps, 70°F
Dye - Caswell’s ‘Fast Blue’, 15 minutes, 140°F
Sealer - 15 minutes, 200°F
The bottom part is anodized with the same settings, but I dyed it with the teal Rit fabric dye. It actually worked pretty good. But I also tried this with the pink and the violet and neither of those dyes took. It was like putting a regular piece of aluminum in the dye and when you remove it all the dye washes off. I have read that red dye can be problematic. But I don’t know what happened. I thought that maybe the part did not anodize properly, so to test that I washed the parts off in distilled water and then dipped them into my Caswell blue dye. The color took right away. So what I think I learned is that the Rit dye doesn’t always work.
Anyway, I know it is not a huge update. I am waiting for some more dyes to arrive so I can do other colors and also try some two color parts.
Josh
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Well guys with the success I have been having with the Caswell Dye and the lack of success with the RIT dye method, I ordered some more colors. ;D To be honest, I didn’t have much faith in the RIT dye method, but figured it was worth investigating more. I still think you could do some awesome stuff with it, but it is not worth the effort when I can get professional dye.
So I ordered the following colors from Caswell
Violet DS
Red Bordeaux
Green AEN
Yellow 3GL
And one of the members of the forum said he was going to send me Teal in exchange for some work. So combining that with the Blue that I have I should have 6 colors to offer. But more importantly I have the primary colors and should be able to mix the dye to get other colors.
So if you would like me to anodize any yoyos with those colors let me know. Again, the plan is to do the first 5-10 yoyo free to build up a portfolio of my work. After that I will start charging for my work.
Josh
Now you are cooking with gas!!
Well I anodized my first yoyo. All in all I think it turned out great. I really need to upgrade my camera though. These Iphone pictures are not showing off my work as well as I would want them too. But that is a project for another day.
Here is the yoyo before:
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_0975.jpg
And after it was stripped:
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_0977.jpg
and then the final anodized yoyo:
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_0982-1024x768.jpg
You can see more pictures of it on my blog.
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/
Wow a few things I am just noticing. First is the string is blue in real life but my camera makes it look almost white. So the blue is darker in real life. Second, I need to invest in a decent camera sometime. Third, I just noticed that the banner on my blog really sucks. lol. It was one of those stock images. So maybe someone is really artistic and can help out. Maybe a robot hand throwing a yoyo would be cool. Okay, i’m tired and rambling now.
Hope you guys like the work,
Josh
Looks good man.
One thing I know is that shop and indoor pics don’t always allow for the full effect. Any chance I get I try to take pics out in the sun.