Need to get a solid gloss color on 6061 hopefully without painting it. Anodizing?

Hello.
I am working on a project that will have various colored 6061 shapes screwed together. I would like it to be as seamless as possible I would like to stay away from paint and how it creates a small parting line. Ideally the colors would be a gloss black and a gloss red similar to ferrari red. How can I achieve this without painting. Polish and anodize? Or something else. Thank you.

You haven't stated the intended purpose or duty conditions for component. Powder coating looks nice unless the component(s) are subject to contact wear or abrasion from road debris (motor vehicle application). Even with that a clear coat(s) can be over-applied to extend life. Lots of colors, can be custom mixed, and can be done with minimal equipment at home. Equipment costs depend upon size of components and finish expectations. Better results than painting IMO for durability, less cost than anodizing.

any paint will produce rounded edge on corners, that will create the "parting line" effect

anodizing will work for this, bright red is certainly possible, the only problem here might be with the red dye, red usually has half the UV resistance of other dyes, so you might want to specify max anodizing thickness for those parts, it will not fix the fading problem, it will take longer to fade, the only fix is UV absorbing clear coat, like automotive, but then you'll have to deal with the edge rounding issue again

plutoniumsalmon said:

Hello.
I am working on a project that will have various colored 6061 shapes screwed together. I would like it to be as seamless as possible I would like to stay away from paint and how it creates a small parting line. Ideally the colors would be a gloss black and a gloss red similar to ferrari red. How can I achieve this without painting. Polish and anodize? Or something else. Thank you.

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Plastic shrink jacket like Folger's instant coffee do yah?



Colour "surface finishes" for Aluminium have been problematic since the first day of outdoor use. Anodizing has the delightful advantage of working with and into the actual atomic structure - dropping a "dot" of colorizer into a hex-cell's center and being 'sealable' with more - transparent Aluminium Oxide - AKA synthetic sapphire. Seriously HARD stuff. But it is THIN. And the colouring compound may not endure. "Red" you said?

And then you have more thermal stress than many other materials, so coatings - other than Anodize - need to be able to move with the metal ELSE temp changes enough and they lose their grip. See old Ferrari's, early days. Even when MONEY was not in short supply they were notorious for shedding paint like makup off a sweaty fat lady's face. Solution until better paints arrived? Back to STEEL for bodywork. Or just total them in crashes before the car or driver, either one, had time to get ugly, same as combat aircraft.

Not a new problem, IOW. Whole industries have grown up to deal with it.

It took some seriously costly paint just to keep TAIL NUMBERS from falling-off Aluminium-skinned combat aircraft, once they got fast enough to run hot-skinned as well as seriously cold, for example.

Not sayin' yer asking the "impossible", but don't expect a great deal of cheap nor easy solutions for long-term durability, either. Not even with a major automaker (my old Jaguar.. Ford's MONEY..) or aircraft maker (any of them..) funding the exercise.

Not limited to Aluminium, of course.

All base material, stone, bone, fiber, hides, and wood onward - has it's own set of challenges.

Some are just more ornery than others. Nature of "which beast", IOW.

Pick the best from what others already do. It will be the best you can GET.

And it will probably be "anodize it", clearcoat it...then JF LIVE with the service life yah get.

"Durable" highly intense colours?

Yah start with Gold, or "platinite", not shiney-wood. They don't MOVE as much.

Add fired glass "enamel".

See "Karl Gustavovich Fabergé".... and "eggs".... or ignorant incandescent lamp base-seals, glass to wire bond and hold a vacuum, sore cold to serious hot.

Now.. have a look at what automakers were able to do for hood-badges on brass, ZAMAK, or PLASTIC? Old "Bow Tie" Chevy, basic "FORD", to "Full Shield" Cattlejacks, Alfa-Romeo, even FIAT with enamel and real silver (well. "plated")?

Pretty impressive for the COST savings vs Karl's one-of-a-kind works, yah?

Even if some were closer kin to lemons, rather than eggs!

If you are willing to carefully spot mask the surfaces that go together a thin UV resistant clear over colored anodize is possible and will reduce but not eliminate the fading.

I believe 6063 anodizes better than 6061 and is just about as available and priced the same.

6063 and 6061 anodize basically with identical results, 6082 (higher Si content) is where you can begin to see differences, higher Si makes the surface (even if polished to mirror) lose its luster, it will be matte and also slightly darker shade, the higher the Si content, the worse it will be, might be a factor for max thickness red shade, makes little difference for black dyed parts

Hello. The use is strictly decorative interior

plutoniumsalmon said:

Hello. The use is strictly decorative interior

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"Ordinary Anodizing" (if there BE such a thing - see many a sad tale about variations, "right here, on PM") should do yah.

Clearcote could improve that. How sharp the end-Luser's EYESIGHT, how enduring their give-a-damn, they care about "corner rounding", anyway?

Unless you have human SWEAT... abrasives, even pocket-dust, or unpredictable / harsh cleaning chemicals in the risk basket?

Examples of response to environmental delta, same product, are all around yah.

Mini-flashlights, cameras and mounts, anodized 'loominum ballpoint pens, 'puters, hand-held "phones" that go in and out of purse and pocket not the worst of examples.

Shit happens.

My concern with the anodizing is the color red. Ideally I'd like it to look like the paint of a red car. I was hoping there is something out there that I can do pre anodizing or something different that would not be painting it. I'll keep looking.

The bright dip anodizing that Maglite uses is about as good as it gets for anodizing. E-coat is thinner than paint and they can do colors other than black, but you need money or volume to do it. Polyurethane e-coat addresses some of the short comings of normal e-coat.

I just got back from the Shot Show and saw a booth for PVD decorative titanium nitride coatings often used in the jewelry world. The parts looked amazing and they can do aluminum. I’m not certain of the vendor name I spoke to, but I’m sure I’ll be getting 800 emails in the coming days.

plutoniumsalmon, you're never going to get an anodized finish that looks like a car finish. The car finish is opaque, with multiple layers. Fancy car finishes have three or four separate layers that all work together.

Actually, take a look at the shop gizmos sold by Edge Technologies. Their signature look is an intense red anodize. It doesn't look anything like a car finish to me, but it's about the deepest, most saturated red anodize you're going to fine.

jz79 said:

6063 and 6061 anodize basically with identical results, ...

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Well there goes another myth blown to smithereens

Do you s'pose the Jorgenson salesman had a huge inventory of 6063 he wanted to get rid of when he told me that ?

I can't speak for everyone, just from my experience regarding 6xxx series alloys, the main (or common among them) alloying element is Si in these, and the amount of it makes the difference (if all other variables are the same), 6063 is slightly less alloyed, so there is some truth to what the sales person said, but, as I said, 6061 is very similar

the specification for 6061/6063/6082 allows varying amounts of Si in the finished material:
6061 0.4-0.8%
6063 0.2-0.6%
6082 0.7-1.3%

you see that there is some overlay with the Si amount, if you happen to get a batch of these where Si matches, then you're all good, the parts will turn out the same after anodizing, but when you get 6082 with 0.7%Si and same 6082 with 1.3%Si, and finished parts are bolted together, then there will be noticeable differences, Si doesn't dissolve, it stays in the oxide structure turning it grayer, and no amount of pretreatment (etching/deox) will solve this completely, but can help to a degree

here I just uploaded a vid that shows difference on undyed parts, the 2 on the left are the "different" ones, 2 on the right are matching, these 4 parts were on the same rack, there were no contact issues or anything else, there were hundreds of those parts, 95% matched, but few were like in the video, and after some questioning, it turned they ordered some extra material to finish the batch of parts, and those were the ones that didn't match the previously purchased material, the alloy was the same - 6082

the difference became very apparent when I used my hand to create a shade

Kyle Smith said:

The bright dip anodizing that Maglite uses is about as good as it gets for anodizing.

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Truly. Even the cheap multi-pak LED flashlight knock-offs that Harbour Freight sells have intense red and blue colours.

The coluurs - never mind the rest - even LAST longer than the price would justify.

But match any "new car" clearcoated automotive finish?

Get TF REAL!