Looking really good. Have my things come in yet?
Looks great. Really tempted to send my Laser to you, but no idea how the bi-metal would handle an ano bath. The heat might do weird things to it.
What materials are in the lazer? You canāt ano steel. Not sure about Ti.
Aluminum body with stainless steel cups inset into the sides. I knew the SS wouldnāt anodize, which would give a cool two-tone look, but iām not sure how the cups are attached, or how tight the tolerances are, so iād worry about applying heat to it.
Yeah, I wasnāt clear at all, I can see that: I didnāt mean that the colour wouldnāt work (which is exactly what it seems like Iām saying!) what I meant is that it canāt be put into an ano bath.
Oooh, didnāt realize that. What would happen?!
Edit. Answered my own question i think:
and
:o
Wow, I had no idea. I just assumed it would have no effect on the steel.
Yeah, I am not putting anything with iron into my tanks. The process which anodizes aluminum is creating aluminum oxide, and is basically oxidizing on steroids. If you put steel in the tank it will make iron oxide, which is also know as rust. 
Stainless would be better thank mild steel, but before anyone tries to say that stainless steel doesnāt rust, let me say it absolutely does. It just doesnāt do it as much as other steels. Under normal conditions stainless steel will not rust, but remember we are talking about oxidizing on steroids.
Also, once you get rust into your acid bath you basically ruin it and will get bad results when trying to anodize other parts. So I am sorry that I canāt really help you unless you have a solid aluminum yoyo or solid titanium yoyo.
I also build motorcycles and some so I am working on anodizing some motorcycle parts. Some of the gear heads started asking if I could do nickel plating or zinc plating. About half of my anodizing equipment is the same equipment needed for that. So if there is enough interest in that, then I will upgrade my equipment.
Josh
DO NICKEL!!!
It would be sick to have someone who could nickle plate.
I have a soft spot for nickle ever since getting my MMN.
Just a shame Iām in the UK ;~;
Titanium eh? Done any test pieces? Not sure if Iām brave enough to do my dazzler yet but maybe someone will ship you a Ricochet or something to try on.
No I have not done any titanium parts yet. I seem to have quite a bit of aluminum scrap around, but not so much titanium. lol. I was not actually asking anyone to send me a titanium yoyo yet. I had done anodizing before on aluminum which is why I felt comfortable doing that. I do have some scrap titanium parts at work that I will test when I have time. I have a long list of anodizing things to do already.
I got my other dyes in the mail and am waiting for the dog tags to arrive. Then I am going to anodize them and dye a dog tag in each color. I have to anodize some parts for work tonight and I just got 3 yoyos in the mail to anodize. I am going to give acid splashing a shot and see what happens.
I also lined up a job anodizing some motorcycle parts in exchange for black dye. So once the dye arrives I should have another color to offer.
After all of that is done and assuming I donāt have paying jobs lined up at that point, I will try out the titanium anodizing.
Josh
wow. really impressed.
Hello everyone. I just wanted to give you all an update since I have not posted in a little while. I was on a snowboarding trip all last week so I didnāt make any progress. But I am back in town and hoping to finish up 5 yoyos this week. I got so many new colors of dye in that I had to go to the store and buy some special containers for them all. Also, I was waiting for some aluminum bar stock to arrive and I made some custom yoyo holders. It is really hard to find aluminum metric screws to thread into the axle hole. So I turned some on the lathe. They are a big help, but I think I can still improve the design some more. I will post some photos of the improvements to my set up, the new colors, and some throws soon.
Thanks,
Josh
2 Likes
Sending my yoyo in ASAP 
If I still had my raw sodablasted Agape, Iād send it your way.
Well everyone it has been a while since I posted. I went on a snowboarding trip and then I have been trying a lot of experiments to figure out the process that would produce amazing anodized yoyos. Well in the past couple weeks I have figured out several ways NOT to anodize, and a some of the methods to do it right. There are a thousand things that will cause flaws, and a lot of prep work before you can actually do the cool part where you dye the yoyo and see the results of all the hard work.
I even had a fire break out in my basement because one of the heater elements melted through the bucket and all the liquid ran out. Those heaters are supposed to be submerged at all times and get way too hot otherwise. Anodizing is not a fast process, so while I wait I often wander around the house and do other things. I was watching tv and heard a strange crackling sound, when I went to check it out the basement was full of smoke and there was not a tiny fire. Honestly, it was not that bad. But at the time even a small fire seems huge. I was thinking āholy crap, I just bought this house and Iām gonna burn it downā
All in all it turned out okay, I ruined a heater and a bucket and nothing else. I am telling this story here because I think people should publish the good with the bad. I read a lot about anodizing and people only want to publish the successes. Please keep in mind the reason my situation only ended with a melted bucket and ruined heater was because I was already being careful. I have my setup in a concrete basement far from other things, its well ventilated and I stay near by and check on it often. These are chemicals we are talking about, and the whole thing can be very safe or very dangerous. Since then I have been working on better ways to do things, that will be safer and get even better results.
But after cleaning up the mess and replacing the parts I started trying to anodize some aluminum dog tags. The goal was to test out all the colors and have a nice set of samples. Unfortunately the dog tags were problematic. They are hard to hold and for various reasons they just never wanted to hold the color well. I probably anodized about 20 of them and only got a couple that looked decent.
I was changing settings, trying different things and still couldnāt figure out what was going on. So I decided to stop trying to do dog tags and try some scrap aluminum from work. First try and it came out great. So the dog tags must be the problem. After a few more practice parts I decided to do a few yoyos.
I think they came out really nice. I am always learning and improving the process, but I am happy with the results. So without further ado here are the pretty pictures.
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1129.jpg
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1133.jpg
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1124.jpg
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1147.jpg
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1143.jpg
And this is a teal test part I did
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1123.jpg
Thought you were gonna say the beeās got you! 
Looks awsome
I did a little more anodizing last night and was able to do a gradient of the teal color. The idea is to vary the length of time the aluminum is in the dye in order to see what range of colors you can get.
http://www.joshupdyke.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/photo.jpg
I did this by hand, but you can put a small drain in the bottom of the dye container and let the dye drain out at a controlled rate to get a even transition of the color. I just started a stop watch and every 10 second lifted the part out of the dye by about a quarter of an inch. You can see that the color changes a lot in the first minute, but then not as much after that.
anyway, I thought I would share my results.
Josh