I have a Manker Mk38 in white, which gets used and not babied. The white looks great and feels tough, but to me it still seems a little bit less robust than a good hard anodized finish. It has gotten some scratches, but it’s not that the finish is flaking off all over the place.
Good enough for me, because I wanted white, I got white and it stays white 
MAO on convoys are definitely more porous than normal ano. I bought the MAO knowing that it wasnt the same quality as USA MAO coatings. The extra I paid was simply for the white skin. My s2+ looks awesome with MAO and the blue lighted switch. Only downside is I cant actually edc it as it gets dirty
Good info about MAO in this thread, thank you. 
We’re living in a real world. That means if it is possible to cut corners, they will be cut. Hip hip chabuduo.
There’s gotta be some way to seal them so they clean easier? Bake some oil into it like a cast iron pan? Take the led out first tho lol. Idk. Scotchgard? Turtle wax?
First idea I had was automotive clearcoat, but that cures shiny. There are some matte clearcoat paints but they’re not as durable. Baking oil into it would probably turn it dark, but maybe some sort of matte-drying wood varnish could work, since they have to absorb into wood and harden.
Most durable would probably be clear cerakote if the flashlight is easy to remove the internals from, like a Convoy S2+ but it is kind of expensive to do properly (and usually requires baking).
Oh ya that…might mess up the color abit lmao.
Ya there’s ceramic sealing products right? One of those would probably work.
Is it porous on the inside of the battery tube on the S2+? Inside of the tube feels the same as the outside?
I ran a coat of rattle-can (gloss) clear on my MAO TS10. It was extremely tacky for days. It doesn’t play well with the coating. Just a light wipe down with 70% IPA (not the beer) to prep the surface before the application. I let it sit for a couple of weeks before I handled it again, and noticed the clear coat flaking in spots. I couldn’t recommend it as any hope of added protection or durability. Wish I’d have left it alone. MAO is shelf queen finish IMO.
We get “aerospace quality aluminum” on every single flashlight…it’s a great marketing bullet point!! lol. I can’t beleive people still advertise the “aerospace” thing but it just won’t go away. I mean sixty years ago it was a selling point but now 6061 and 7075 are all over the place in all kinds of bits and bobs. 6061-T6, by virtue of volume produced alone, is actually super inexpensive nowadays. That said, I think a lot of our lights that are sold as 6061 are not actually that alloy, easy as it is to bend head/tail openings and some tube ends. Probably cheaper 5052 or 30xx. Not many advertise 7075 but those may be legit…not the greatest choice for a host material though. But I like knowing my flashlights could survive - even thrive, maybe - on an interstellar planetary mission.
What type of coating was it? Most polyurethane doesn’t play well on hard smooth surfaces but what’s in cans is usually diluted enough that it can work ok. Wood lacquers (like Deft classic) aren’t so good, but automotive/wheel lacquers are great. Hard to prep such a textured surface (knurling, etc) well without destroying it, so sometimes this is a case where a thicker coat does better than a thinner one, where the coating can hopefully hold itself together even if it’s not bonded well to the substrate (more true for paints but some clear finishes aren’t really that far off from being a “paint”). All that said, whatever process they’re using for this MAO may be different than the usual anodizing finish steps, so it’s possible with the apparent porosity that stuff may be in there and affecting your coating. If you used a polyurethane you may just have to let it wear off, or perhaps gentle heating followed by duct tape to see if you can pull it all off that way…any solvent that will remove poly will probably harm the MAO and/or the aluminum anyway…lacquers would be much simpler and faster to remove with acetone unless they’re a special auto lacquer, and that would probably be safe for the MAO. I don’t know how clear acrylic coatings would do here (like Krylon…not sure who else makes one of those these days, they’re not a common formulation anymore).
This stuff.
Eh…I’ve never been a fan of most Rustoleum products but I’ve actually used that one, but over paint. It did ok but I didn’t care for it as a clear finish. I think it’s a modified lacquer formulation but it’s not what you’d call normal lacquer or anything tough, and it’s not a polyurethane either. That quick flash time for recoat followed by the long semi-cure window before additional coats acts more like a polyurethane, and when I tested it on some pvc pipe, the film was pretty soft and not very strong either (a lot of Rustoleum products are softer when cured compared to others)…all those in combination would make me not want to use it on any metal, painted or primed. Had another thought…were both the light and the can at the same-ish temperature and room-ish temp when you applied? Sometimes if the piece is cool or cold finishes just don’t cooperate, and that’s also true if you over-warm a piece before application.
If you ever get the urge to coat another light, try some auto wheel/caliper clear coat like Duplicolor (easy to find at parts stores) or something a little better/$$ from a paint supply. Good stuff and one of the few durable clear coatings that you can get in a rattle can and not have to mix up for a gun.
It was more of an impromptu thing just to see what difference it would make. Actually my wife did the spray back in mid-October. It wasn’t a very professional approach. It was probably in the 60°F range at the time. Your observation of the Rustoleum finish is pretty spot on. I wouldn’t use it again.
Good info, my buddy bought a Convoy for the white finish and found it to be “flimsy”.
I anodized some aluminum a while back, wanted to be able to get a professional look to lights I made from scratch. Learned that the acid bath creates nanotubes in the surface layer of the aluminium, much like a honeycomb structure. Type III hard anodize has ultra small tubes that only black dye fits into due to the molecular size of the dye itself. White dye won’t fit into any grade of the nanotubes.
I see people referring to ano as “flaking off” or how “thick” it is…. If it flakes it’s a coating, not ano. And it’s a matter of depth, not thickness. More a matter of how deep it is than how thick it is. 
I made my first scratch built light in 2015. Bare 6061-T6. It’s still shiny metallic looking to this day. As are the others I built from scratch, no anodization.
When I tested cera-coated lights, done on cheap zoomies, I found that if the product was made in a softer grade of aluminium then the coating could be broken away, the base material needs to be hard enough to support it.
Not all lights are made with 6061. Many are 6063 or even 2024. 6061 is a tough material, amazingly so! I used a piece of 1/2” rod to make a weighted video gimbal for filming with a full-frame sensor Canon camera, bending it around a steel car wheel proved very challenging! I actually beat it with a sledgehammer! Took a solid hour and the big sledge left no discernible markings on the puny little aluminium rod. Blew my mind.
And as a proof, I refer you to my video testing on the Eagle Eye X6. Dropped it on asphalt at 60mph. You could hear it sliding on the rough surface, no visible signs of that though, and the only real damage done was when the tail cap caught a stone and flipped the light high into the air, and a bit on the bezel when it landed, still going 40 mph or so, tumbling and bouncing. Light is still fully functional, I built it up as a triple after testing.
This quality was available as a host for $11. Just add a driver and an emitter (or multiples) of choice.
My new MAO hanklight had worn off more in two days than a others in two months. All the sharper edges are showing shinier alu color. I was expecting faster wear, but not that fast.
I don’t have have shelf queens and I think it’ll look great when super worn off too, since it matches the stainless button ring and large square bezel. It has a lot of knurling and large fins (dt8k) so most of it should remain whitish-grey.
Its now about a week old:
Any treatment of the prous MAO would surely ruin thermal dissipation completely. So, if the light is not to be greased and used as a roller bearing, MAO might not actually be a usable surface finish.
Next try:
Corundum finish. Flash tempering the surface to 1600°C in pure oxigen could grow shiny lilac abrasive crystals of excellent durability. With this, one could use the light as a knife sharpener. Hmmm…
MAO essentially is corundum. That said, “corundum” gets applied to an awful lot of things, all based on aluminum oxide. A lot of the “ruby” sharpening and grinding stones are…“corundum”…as are the more friable white ones…etc etc etc. I think depending on the process and source you can get just about any color in the rainbow (but not for these metal finishes…different animal there).
Much as I understand right now and with what I’ve held in hand of a “known good” application, MAO certainly can be much more durable and much thicker than the best anodizing.
I got an S2+ MAO in the other day. Looks like it’s maybe a better quality than what was on the Wurkkos but yeah, not exactly hard or durable, definitely not anything like the US applied that I got to look at. It’d be nice if they could pursue a better finish from whichever outfits in China are doing this for the various brands’ lights but for now it seems like just a decorative color.
MAO makes amorphous aluminium oxide.
Corundum is a crystal.
Chemical sum identical, but totally different material.
That sucks elendur! Still a cool flashlight though.
I suspect my MAO S2+ would look similar if not pampered. The tail lockout stopped working right away since the coating on the threads wore off despite plenty of lube.
