You need to be aware that if you wish to use the same colour on a number of parts that will be used together, if they are made from different alloys they will not be exactly the same colour.

Never tried it myself (yet) but I'm told Dylon fabric dies work well; the ones in the little round aluminium tins.

Bill

I seem to recall that someone did a trial using Dylon fabric dyes and concluded that the results were very mixed. If I remember correctly there was a red shade that worked well but some other colours were not worth using. I think small quantities of proper anodising dye can be found on ebay at reasonable cost and this would probably be a good idea for a novice, to increase the chance of success.

Doug

I have tried this, using this article as a guide: **LINK** and got good results, with or without the dye.

I bought the black dye as crystals from ebay, a Chinese constant current power supply, also from ebay, used roofing lead as the cathode and aluminium MIG welding wire to hold the components being anodised. I modelled the components in CAD to calculate the surface area and hence the required anodising current.

One thing that surprised me was how effective the anodised layer is at not conducting electricity – touching the surface with the ohm meter probes shows infinite resistance. But dunk the item in caustic soda for a few seconds and the anodising is gone and conductivity returns.

Apart from all the stuff you need to do it (tank, power supply, battery acid, dye, lead cathodes, work holders etc) what I found a faff was the time required for each stage – anodising, dying, sealing. That's about three hours to do one small component. I'd consider making the part out of black Delrin if you can and save all the trouble.

Dare say these sellers are not operating by the current law (breaking it) and selling what otherwise would be redundant stock.

Getting a explosive licence near on impossible for non business, the paper work, checks etc you just dont want to know even 16 years ago.

Tried every dye i could get hold of 15 years ago from Quink to fabric dyes, no luck. Ended up finding a supplier to anodisers over Leicester and had the same powder sent.
This was at the time 4 articles worldwide on anodising, all told porkies by either omitting key areas to blatant lies. There is a lot more write ups these last 10 years with kits available.

Different aluminum grades will yield different colours.

Depends what you want to do theres three types of anodising.
Chromic is just cosmetic wont last at all if touched and wafer thin.
Sulphuric the most common, lasts and a far better depth to the colour.
Hard anodising is sulphuric Type 3 thicker penetration and extarnal gain. Colours will look rather different and i have only ever achieved this twice.

Have seen a number of results from 6 people using those home brew kits, so far i have not seen a presentable item. In fact got one here but a picture wouldnt do it justice as it wont pick out the blemishes, blue tint and almost black patches. This is with simple items turned and spin polished, if used bead blast would look hell of a lot different like coarse matt.
I use 60/120 grit for bead blasting items but specify to a professional i want it satin to a sheen and know what theyre doing being the only one to date found. Others 'Will' scrap the part 9 out of every 10 items guaranteed.

From the 1st Nov' 2018 it will become an offence to even possess sulphuric acid above 15% w/w without an EPP licence. Apparently you're OK if it's still inside the battery but you'll be in trouble if it's in a little container like they (used to) supply when shipping dry cell batteries.

Have a good look on your top shelve's chaps, overnight you might unwittingly become a terrorist.

Home anodising is effectively dead.

Try Gateros Plating, very helpful.