Anodize of any type should not "rub off" very easily. You have to remove the aluminum oxide in order to remove the anodize - which is amazingly difficult to do.
Yeah, I meant to say that I’m seeing some patches of metal on the edges of the light.
Here’s a shot:
Interesting.. didnt know all that.
Whenever I see a light that doesn`t look like good quality anodizing, I usually just called it HA II (though now I now that it doesnt exist).
For me it was just guessing.. I thought there was something like: 1=paint, 2=shiny paint like substance 3=thick layer
but I stand corrected..
What do you think could cause an anodized coating to fade with only exposure to skin oils and a couple showers? I have one which has lost quite a bit of its color (click for bigger versions):
This shade of turquoise is a relatively subtle color though, so look what happens if I change its hue by 60 degrees to show how the same fading would look in blue: (all I changed was hue, nothing else)
Was this even anodized at all? Could it have been anodized and dyed but not sealed? Any other ideas what would explain this?
Seems like this is a complex issue. Pretty interesting discussion so far though.
Does this mean we can have white coloured anodized type 2 lights?
If this is possible, I want to request that every light from now on is white anodizing.
Anodizing dyes are technically not opaque - they are translucent. Because of this, white is pretty much impossible - it will always be tinted toward the color of the base material - in this case, grey.
PPtk
knee jerk, totally non expert, probably wrong first thought:
paint
That's a fine example of REALLY crappy anodizing...
Damn. Well if a white light ever comes out I’ll probably get that.
ChiX’s cerakoted lights come to mind.
Not an impossible theory.
:bigsmile:
You want the hardest most durable finish you can put on aluminum, and it happens to be white? Here you go..
http://www.whyco.com/images/Cerafuse_aluminum.pdf
I could try to explain how tough this stuff is, but I wouldn't succeed. You have to see it to believe it. It is absolutely unbelieveable.
Wow, from what I’m reading, it’s 3-4 times harder than HA-III anodizing?
Yep. One other nice feature of the coating is that it will survive to whatever temperature the aluminum itself will survive. In other words, the coating will not be damaged, degraded, discolored or removed by heat until the point at which the aluminum melts.
Cool stuff.
PPtk
The process of applying CeraFuse involves plasma discharge with temperature over 5000 Celsius… I wonder how much it costs to apply this to lights. How practical is this?
In reasonable quantity, it's actually very affordable. We do some parts with this process, and the cost is roughly 2X of Type III Anodizing.
That’s pretty nice.
Would it be possible to do a big GB and then have them coated?
I would love to have some hard lights that are very very tough.
They're very nice people. The man to ask for is Peter Masella.
I, unfortunately, do not have time to manage a group buy - but if someone else wants to, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.
I never really thought about it before, but I will probably strip the anodize off of one of my lights and send it with our next batch. It would be really nice. It's just astonishing how hard this stuff is. Tough as nails doesn't even describe it because you can grind down a steel nail on aluminum coated with this stuff :)
PPtk
Thats odd. It doesn’t entirely look like a wear pattern especially around the model name.
Try boiling just the body in water for 30 minutes (sealing it). If you don’t boil the head you could see if that continues to fade while the body doesn’t.
How long have you had it?