I missed the logo part. It looks like they may have done a lower voltage gold on the logo? With it engraved you could do a fine brush with some acid to remove the purple and then dip again since the lower voltage gold will not affect the higher volt purple.
Lower volt colors also produce a slightly thinner oxide layer btw.
Fine lines depends on your resist/mask. If it’s thinned enough you can capture brush strokes. You can also do a reverse resist similar to a copper etch like this -
So what you do is cover the entire area with a resist. Then carve through the resist for what you want anodized. You can’t get the deeper shading like on the copper, but a flat image/design. You can go back with say 2000 wet grit sand paper and shade/fade areas. A tiny piece glued on a q-tip worked for me messing around. On my flipper (knife) I wanted to get a faux copper patina look after getting this beautiful powder blue color. So I wanted to have several effects of gold, copper, purple, green, etc. to show through with different finishes from powdery mat to polished shine. In real life in sunlight it was pretty cool. You were always catching color shifts and changes.
Hey guys, I’m not active here anymore but since you guys keep spamming my e-mail and there’s a lot of bad information/speculation being posted in response, I guess it’s time to chime in.
I used a 1A, 0-120V DC power supply. The yoyo does indeed belong to ChaosGOW.
The engraving color has nothing to do with Annealing, so lets get that one out of the way before it continues. Metals can get colored in an annealing process due to oxide formation on metals, but annealing is an entirely different process that has little/nothing to do with yoyos. Annealing is generally done with hardenable steel to restructure the crystal lattice into a form that’s under less stress and therefore more work-able.
I did a single anodization on the TiWalker at a single voltage. The actual reason for the text color is the different surface finish. When you anodize titanium, you’re forcing oxides to form. The letters are laser etched, it’s essentially removing tiny bits of the surface, which changes the texture on a tiny scale. Because of this, the oxide formation was ever so slightly inhibited, so it ended up thinner than it was on the rest of the yoyo. The oxide thickness is what causes the refraction of light that creates the colors . Different surface finish on the engraving means a different color. That’s also why anodized titanium will change colors after being handled and picking up oils from your hands.
You can accomplish similar changes in surface material via mechanical or chemical etching, and that will change how the material looks when you anodize it. You can also use heat to anodize for the same reason electricity works. It forms an oxide layer on the surface which causes light to refract differently. I find it far less
The Ricochet was a bit more involved and included two different surface finishes. The dark blue was acid etched and the purple is polished. I used a resist for both the acid etching and the two anodization steps.
If you have any other questions about anodizing yoyos, you have my attention for a bit. Biggest suggestion to anyone who finds this thread and wants to give it a try: cleanliness is key. Any oils, fingerprints, water spots, or anything else that manages to stay on the surface prior to anodization will change the oxide formation and leave you with different color spots or patches. Unless it’s your intention, it’ll look like crap. Despite what a certain yoyo brand has tried to pass off, fingerprints are probably not going to pass as intentional.
you say that the graphics of the Ti Walker are laser done, Vizier who made them says this
what it is I cannot know but it is certainly not a laseration, looking at it with a magnifying glass you can see a texture similar to that of the color prints on the magazines and also because the writings are colored, from a light brown (like my # 75) to dark brown … the laserings are tending to white like on the Ti Vayder, for example
How do I do this? I’ve not done it and am feeling left out. I want to participate!
And as you know, exposure to air will create an oxide layer to form quickly. So keeping your piece submerged after the 1st rinse from cleansing/acid bath will change the oxide formation too. The same as spraying down with Windex or similar after anodizing will help set colors slightly.
The process was described to me by the company I used as “pulling impurities to a concentrated area with super heating”.
It was for sure done with a laser (I used the same company that I had lasered the SADRs with). I watched the first one on a botched Ti Walker half before then having it tested on Ti Walker 0 to see if it added any noticeable vibe or unforeseen issues before giving it the green light.
I doubt this helps, but I keep seeing it pop up so I figured it would be best to share what I know.
I stand corrected, thanks for chiming in! Looks like laser annealing is indeed a thing and doesn’t actually affect the surface texture of the titanium. I was not familiar with the process. Very cool, and definitely explains the slight color difference in thay location while anodizing.
Haha… I never changed my settings when the forum was switched over so I get an email any time someone responds. Not a bother at all, just didn’t expect my thread to get resurrected/popular 5 years later.
Good advice though. I cleaned/degreased, dropped it in an ultrasonic cleaner, acid etched, and immediately dropped it into the anodization bath, followed by a dunk in Windex. Any time it was not in one of those processes I would drop it in distilled water. Definitely good to get a process going. Redos are not fun.
Second tip specifically for yoyos would be to spend a lot of time on getting a solid fixturing made Good contact is absolutely necessary and lead to a lot of the original issues I ran into going from knife scales and the like to yoyos. I used titanium threaded rod attached through a titanium plate which was nice and sturdy and let me do both halves at once.
I just looked at mine and you are totally right. Laser annealing is indeed a process that I was not aware of and it does not change the surface finish. Sounds like it oxidizes the metal below the surface and does slightly does sound like it changes the structure of the titanium at the surface, which would wxplain why it anodizes differently (similar to how different grades of titanium anodize to slightly different colors at the same voltages). I do a lot of heat treatment (including annealing) on steel and it’s a very different process/purpose there, so I guess that led to my confusion.
Regardless, I figured I’d clear up the speculation on how I did it. Nothing magic on my part, just a result of the process Heath used when making them.
Never thought about using ultrasonic too! I was carrying my pieces from the kitchen to the living room and in open air I was getting anomalies from a 10 second walk, and maybe 30 seconds hook up. Keeping them in distilled helped some go away immediately.
The plate for halves is a good idea as if you want exact colors, the same anno bath dip was key. Even at 10ths of an amp adjustments exact colors were a toss up for me. 1st thing I did was over ionize the water thinking it was a depletion issue, it wasn’t.
