Rattling noises and anodizing

[GeorgeRa]

Dealing with rattling noises in any vehicle is not much fun, in my van, I diagnosed that the sofa/bed was the overwhelming source of noise but only on rough roads. It was happening only in the sofa/bed sitting position. A slight fore and aft motion of the sitting panel was the culprit. The solution was to place 2 lever clamps on both side of the bed. It takes a few seconds to engage them, but implementation was not simple.

On the third picture I highlighted a countersink hole, it required a $60 tool, life is not easy but good.

I am perhaps too sensitive to esthetics of the van, on the first 2 pictures you can see the difference in raw aluminum versus anodized one, anodized parts just look better at a very reasonable cost. So, I love anodized parts.

[markopolo]

It's an absolute pleasure looking at photos of your work.

[booster]

Anodizing is great stuff, lots of colors, very tough surface, especially if you have a source that doesn't kill you on minimum charges. There used to be a bunch of smaller plating and anodizing shops around us, but most are now gone so you get stuck with the larger shops with big minimum charges. Sometimes you can get in with a batch through a custom motorcycle shop at a better price, both for anodizing and plating.



Also be very sure to have all your machining done before the anodizing, or you will get a chance to replace or sharpen all your cutters and drills, even carbide.

[avanti]

Yeah, modern hazardous waste standards have made mom-and-pop shops impractical.

[booster]

Originally Posted by avanti

Yeah, modern hazardous waste standards have made mom-and-pop shops impractical.

That is exactly what happened here. The days of a 600 square foot building full of steel drums used for plating tanks, full of hazardous stuff, are long gone.


One that I used to deal with, that had been around for like 50 years in the same spot, forfeited the building when they closed and stuck the city with the cleanup. They had to excavate 20 feet deep to get rid of hazardous soil under the building, but were lucky that the water table was lower than that.

[avanti]

Originally Posted by booster

One that I used to deal with, that had been around for like 50 years in the same spot, forfeited the building when they closed and stuck the city with the cleanup. They had to excavate 20 feet deep to get rid of hazardous soil under the building, but were lucky that the water table was lower than that.

We once put an offer on a vacation property out West. It was sort of a compound, with several outbuildings, one of which had an old underground gasoline storage tank and pump. We added a contingency to our offer that they provide an inspection certifying the soundness of any underground tanks. We never heard from the seller again.

[D&J Phillips]

Elegant work!

[GeorgeRa]

Thank you all for positive feedback.

My cost for anodizing was $25, their minimum rate, which included stripping of the previous anodized layer on flat plates from the 8020.net. This shop is doing anodizing only so they don’t have to deal with heavy metals like chromium, nickel or copper.

As I wrote “I love anodizing finish”, so here is a little story.
What is common between a watch and anodizing?

- A quick answer is – Apple, their watches are sold in anodized aluminum frame or stainless, one even with a diamond coating, that is the answer of the 21st Century.

- The long answer is a little deeper. But the background of anodizing is necessary to understand this second answer. Anodizing is the electrochemical process of coating aluminum with a thin layer of vertically oriented hexagonal crystals of aluminum oxide. Aluminum parts are immersed in a sulfuric acid bath, connected as an anode (+), and stainless steel as a cathode (-). Parts are finish when aluminum oxide covers all aluminum surface (voltage rise), rinsed, dyed or not, an sealed in hot water.

In short, that coating is a hard layer of material which as a mineral is called Corundum, if red it is called ruby or if blue it is called sapphire. Clean corundum is colorless but contaminated with chromium it becomes ruby and with iron and titanium - sapphire. In short, anodizing build a crystal layer from which rubies come from.

Back to common aspect with a watch, do you remember times when a quality of watches was measured by a number of Jewels, 21 was good but 25 was even better. These jewels were used as bearings made from rubies for rotating shafts, or other high wearing parts - more good bearings meant higher quality.

So the common between anodizing and watches is material of very hexagonal crystals of aluminum oxide. This is the answer of the past Century and of the end days of this remarkable technology.

https://www.ad-na.com/en/product/jew...h-bearing.html
https://www.quora.com/What-are-jewel...watch-good-for

[booster]

And if you really want tough get hard coat anodize, which is good enough for aluminum cylinder air cylinders to last a very long time.