Letter 157

Anodizing setup for student lab

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I intend to set up a laboratory scale anodising tank for use in student laboratory classes (+/- 50 litres capacity).

Is anyone aware of an article that describes such a set-up as opposed to a production one?

Nigel Laxton - Senior Research Engineer
Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering
The University of Western Australia
Nedlands 6097
Western Australia

There is a book that has been published entitled "Artists Anodizing Aluminum"

This book is geared toward a setup of a small anodizing line and was designed for artists anodizing jewelery. This is a well done book and I think it will be exactly what you are seeking.

Author: David LaPlance
Press LaPlance
PO Box 220
Bayside, CA 95524

Joe Hillock

I like this website "finishing.com", but become somewhat frustrated at the level of help. I am a trained organic chemist and work with some pretty nasty stuff. True, nitric acid and sulfuric acid and other "inorganic" potions can be very dangerous to handle, but there are organics at the ppm level also considered hazardous. All of these things can be handled safely without a wearing a moon suit inside of a 500,000 cfm hood.

Providing basic formulae and procedures should not put anyone at risk. The above question is rather clear, the person wants to demonstrate anodization in a class room setting and is not intending to set up a job shop or compete with one. Surely there is a small scale process that could be done in a fruit jar that would not result in the development of a weapon of mass destruction!

I say "lighten up" and let some of us "tinkerers" play around with these processes in our laboratories and garages.

Ron Mlejnek
- Hastings, NE, USA

Ron, your complaint/criticism is apparently a general one rather than in reference to this particular letter--because Mr. Laxton asked for an article describing a student laboratory setup and Mr. Hillock (a production anodizer) provided the name and full particulars for a very inexpensive book that was exactly what Mr. Laxton was looking for, and shippable from stock in 24 hours from Amazon if it wasn't in the local library.

You are, as you say, a trained organic chemist. But thousands of people viewing these pages are totally untrained hobbyists and schoolchildren. The internet is a giant one-room schoolhouse and we can't lock them out while you and I are publically talking. As for the general issue of hobbyist "tinkering", we censor neither those who recommend it nor those who caution against it. In fact, some of the advertisers who make the site possible are suppliers of hobby-level kits, and we applaud their efforts at making plating as safe and waste-free as possible.

But, yes, we remind people that electroplating & anodizing is different from other activities -- not so much because of the dangers you allude to, but because the U.S. government singled it out for special treatment to be the nation's very first EPA categorically regulated industry. It's not us who want plating solutions treated like plutonium -- we rail against it!

We in the industry know people who are serving time in the penitentiary for careless or criminal disposal of the waste products from their plating operation (I have two such acquaintances). Others have paid fabulous fines.

Still others -- and I know many -- have condemned themselves to work the rest of their lives at a job they despise because closing the business is impossible due to multi-million dollar cleanup costs. Some such people found themselves in such a position after they started plating motorcycle parts in their garage and were sucked in by degrees over the years. We don't want people to find themselves with a hundred gallons of waste in their garage that they can't afford to dispose of without losing their home.

Safety is only one reason we are reluctant to publish formulas and would prefer to refer people to books and articles that contain them, such as the Metal Finishing Guidebook. The other reason is that we don't want to unwittingly abet violation of patents or blow trade secrets. When we get over 100 e-mails a day from largely anonymous strangers around the world, how can we know that joeblow@hotmails' suggestion to "try adding 1 g/l of dimaskylacrylic acid to your acid tin bath" is not an offering from a disgruntled employee who is anonymously blowing his former employer's trade secrets?

We appreciate every suggestion and criticism. What we do today is the product of 12 long years of trial-and error and 12 years of highly appreciated suggestions, certainly including yours. But we do feel it is completely valid to suggest that someone have at least one old $5 book on metal finishing on hand before deciding they are going to start fooling around in the nation's first categorically regulated business.

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

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