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Clear Anodize spotting

I work in a job shop where we do medical parts using 6061 for the product material.

We were machine polishing the parts with good results. We are now trying to tumble our parts to cut costs. We had a batch of parts come back with shadows and gray areas. Any way to get rid of this with out stripping the anodize?

Walt Bridge
job shop - South Bend, IN, USA
2005

2005

When you tumbled the parts (probably in media used previously with steel), then you embedwded iron and other junk into the soft (Kleenex-like) aluminum metal. You only anodize aluminum, but occlude all that other stuff you embedded which causes the mottled varying gray and brown tones in the final finish.

Robert H Probert
Robert H Probert Technical Services

Garner, North Carolina

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