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Choosing the Right Finishes for Your Aluminum Parts
Choosing the Right Finishes for Your Aluminum Parts
Top 7 Types of Aluminum Finishes to Elevate Your Projects
When it comes to choosing the right finishes for aluminum parts, it’s important to understand that different finishes offer unique benefits in terms of durability, aesthetics, and functionality. From anodizing to powder coating, these finishes can significantly impact the performance and appearance of your aluminum components.
Aluminum coatings are essential surface treatments manufacturers and product designers commonly use to protect aluminum alloys from high heat, abrasion, chemical reactions, and humidity. Below are different types of aluminum coatings suitable for your project:
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Anodizing
Anodizing is an electrochemical process that enhances abrasion and corrosion resistance in aluminum parts by thickening the natural oxide layer to form a dense film. The aluminum coatings become thicker depending on the time the aluminum spends in the anodizing tank containing electrolytic solution.
More importantly, anodized aluminum offers several desirable benefits, such as dye adhesion, vibrant colors, and better heat dissipation in aluminum machined parts. Below are the different anodizing types:
Clear Anodizing
Clear anodizing is an anodizing finish that doesn’t involve using dyes. Clear coating is more forgiving, unlike darker anodized colors, which usually exhibit color inconsistency and disfigurations when installed on-site.
Dyed Anodizing
This involves dying the anodic film into any color to achieve a decorative finish after the anodizing process. This dyeing process provides a vibrant finish on the aluminum part. Anodized aluminum absorbs the dye through the pores of the aluminum oxide layer when immersed in a dye bath. It allows you to achieve a range of colors that best fit the requirements of your parts.
Hard, Clear, and Dyed Anodizing
Hard, clear anodizing offers greater corrosion and wear resistance in aluminum products. Although it is similar to regular anodizing, its oxide layer is thicker and more durable on an aluminum surface. Hard clear anodizing is commonly used to achieve a clear finish with enhanced durability in aluminum products.
Conversely, hard-dyed anodizing provides a thicker and more robust coating with a wide range of color options added through dyeing. As a result, it helps to enhance the durability of aluminum parts and achieve a specific color for your custom aluminum parts.
Blasting + Anodizing
Blasting and anodizing are a combination of two processes commonly used to prepare and anodize aluminum parts. The blasting process involves using an abrasive media such as glass beads or sand to remove imperfections or contaminants from the surface of aluminum components.
Then, you can anodize the prepped aluminum surface to achieve the desired coating. This anodizing process forms a smooth, high-quality oxide layer on the aluminum surface.
Powder Coating
Powder coating is a surface treatment that provides shiny, long-lasting colors with excellent resistance to ultraviolet rays in various metals. You must clean and prep the aluminum parts, then spray the powder coat with an electrostatic gun to apply the dry paint powder on the metal surface. Then, you must bake the powder-coated aluminum parts to melt and cure the coating to achieve a uniform finish.
Powder coatings are not as hard and long-lasting as anodized aluminum. However, powder coatings provide an excellent appearance and corrosion resistance. Unlike liquid painting, the powder coating technique is non-toxic since it lacks solvents comprising volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Chemical Conversion Coating
Chemical conversion coating or alodine finish is an inexpensive alternative to anodizing. Chromate chemical conversion is suitable for improving the passivating oxide layer on the aluminum parts surface. It provides excellent corrosion resistance and an aesthetically appealing exterior.
Moreover, chemical conversion coatings provide high electrical conductivity in aluminum machined parts in applications that require high electrical conductivity. However, alodine solution has low environmental sustainability compared to other finishes.
Chrome Plating
Chromate plating is widely embraced in consumer goods and manufacturing industries. It uses an electrolytic process to form a protective aluminum layer and bright luster on the surface of the aluminum part by submerging it in an electrolytic bath. Chrome plating is especially suitable for decorative purposes or enhancing the preferred properties of machine parts.
Below are the two types of chrome plating that offer the preferred surface finish for metals:
Hard Chrome Plating
Hard chrome plating, or industrial or engineered chrome, involves immersing a metal part in a chromic acid solution. It is usually thicker than the decorative type and ideal for various industrial applications that require great strength, wear, and corrosion resistance.
Hard chrome provides a durable thickness that reduces friction between machine parts, improving components durability and performance. More importantly, industrial chrome ensures machine components extended lifespan and reduces downtime and maintenance expense risks.
Decorative Chrome Plating
Decorative chrome plating improves the aesthetic appeal of aluminum parts with its thin layer of chromium asides protecting the base material from corrosion and wear. This chrome plating doesn’t offer the same durability levels as the hard chrome plating.
However, it is easy to clean, provides some corrosion and wear resistance, and improves your metals aesthetic appeal. Its typical applications include kitchen utensils, car parts, and tools.
Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)
Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) coating is a typical resin-based aluminum coating entrenched with color pigment particles. They are best applied on aluminum machined components in a factory setting and provide an extensive range of matte-finish colors. These coatings offer extreme hardness and high insolubility, allowing them to protect metal substrates from corrosion.
PVDF coatings ensure your metal surfaces exhibit excellent resistance to fading, chemicals, and corrosive substances. Hence, these aluminum coatings are ideal for exterior applications such as aluminum wall cladding. More importantly, you do not need an oven to cure PVDF coatings, and these coatings do not contain toxic VOCs like liquid painting.
Teflon Coating
Teflon or PTFE coating is excellent for different applications ranging from automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical, aerospace, optical devices, and cookware. Teflon coating has a high molecular weight, which makes it resistant to water.
Product engineers often choose this coating because of its long list of benefits, including outstanding electricity insulation, ultraviolet ray resistance, doesn’t absorb water, and can withstand extreme temperatures.
Its high chemical resistance property makes it a well-suited coating for aluminum components in the medical industry. It is suitable for coating tubes, pipes, and vessels. Similarly, its low-friction co-efficient property makes it an ideal aluminum coating in automotive and industrial applications.
Electrophoretic Coating
The electrophoretic coating or E-coat process involves submerging the aluminum product in a bath of coating material and using an electric current to apply the coating on the surface. It provides your product with good resistance to corrosion and chemicals.
This aluminum coating type is straightforward and inexpensive, making it a popular choice in industries like the automotive industry. This coating solution allows you to combine other coatings to enhance its performance further.
Choosing the Right Finish for Your Project
It would help to know that the aluminum part protection that these processes offer often varies from bright and mirror-like to rough or patterned. Therefore, it is advisable to understand these surface finishes to determine the one that best enhances your products. It would help to choose a finish that meets your application’s quality standards and ensures the aluminum part fits and functions well.
The aluminum metal’s versatility makes it compatible with an extensive list of applications, including automotive, aerospace, marine, defense and military, and consumer products. However, it is crucial to consider environmental factors when choosing aluminum coatings for your project, especially if your product is meant for outdoor use.
It would help to consider environmental factors that can affect aluminum parts in the long run, such as humidity, temperature, sunlight, ultraviolet rays, etc., when choosing a finish for aluminum machined parts for outdoor applications. Choose a finish that ensures the extended life span of aluminum machined parts even when exposed to environmental factors.
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Nevertheless, ensure that the chosen aluminum coating fits your budget without sacrificing quality. More so, your budget should guide your choice of a finish while having quality in mind because choosing a costly finish may increase the product’s machining cost.
Elevate Your Projects with Expert Aluminum Finishing
Aluminum coating is fundamental to your custom aluminum parts because it helps to elevate these products from ‘basic’ to ‘superior.’ Besides, partnering with an aluminum finishing expert is crucial in achieving the best results when producing aluminum parts. Therefore, you must understand these finishes to choose the ideal one for your products and intended application.
AT-Machining offers expert aluminum finishing at the best prices that fit within your budget. Our team of expert product designers, engineers, and quality control experts ensures your aluminum parts get the right finish that meets the intended application’s demand. Contact us today to elevate your project to the desired quality standard. Upload your CAD file now for an instant quote!
Aluminum Coatings: Anodizing Vs. Powder Vs. Painting
Posted on Sept. 18th, 2022 | By WayKen Rapid Manufacturing
Aluminum alloys are one of the most widespread metals in the world. I’m not talking about ore deposits but the usage of aluminum in every aspect of human life. It is lightweight, durable and strong. It is also corrosion-resistant because of its thin oxide film that can only be melted at over a thousand degrees centigrade. Nonetheless, aluminum coatings are used a lot, the most widespread of them being painting, oxidizing and powder coating.
Why Coat Aluminum At All?
That’s a fair question since aluminum has its own protection against the aggressive environment, why bother coating it at all?
Modern manufacturers and customers today have much more demands towards aluminum parts and the conditions those parts have to withstand can be too much even for the protective oxide film.
For instance, aerospace rocket covers are made of thin aluminum sheets and the temperatures they have to withstand come close to the melting point of the oxide layer. They don’t teach this point but the film can easily crack because of the rapidly changing temperatures. Marine parts are submerged in a highly corrosive salt water that gradually corrodes even aluminum. Modern industry poses new challenges concerning corrosion and the answer the manufacturers have come up with is an aluminum coating.
A Brief Overview Of Anodizing, Powder Coating, and Painting
Before we start comparing the three most widespread aluminum coatings, let’s freshen up your memory of those techniques in case you’ve gotten rusty on any of the specifics.
Anodizing
Anodizing is a unique process. It doesn’t administer new material to create a coating but uses the material itself. An aluminum part is put into a tank with a conducting liquid. Then, a current with low voltage and high amperage passes through the tank and the part. As a result, the oxide film thickens and becomes porous at its outer surface.
Liquid Painting
This one is the oldest conventional technique to coating virtually any material. You purchase a can of paint and a brush and you’re all set. Just be sure not to exhale too much of the paint since it’s a little bit toxic until it solidifies. Over the years, the market has amassed a tremendous variety of available colors. And you can mix some paints to get the tint you want too.
Aluminum Powder Coating Process
Powder Coating aluminum is the new eco-friendly way to administer paint. You would need professional equipment, namely a pneumatic gun that sprays ionized dry powder particles that stick to the surface of the aluminum part because of ionization. Then, you put the part in the oven, bake it and the powder film becomes uniform and connects both with the powder and the part.
Powder Coating Vs. Liquid Painting
Let’s compare the two similar methods first. Both can be considered painting but they are quite different as are their respective areas of use.
Liquid painting is your ultimate choice if you have a low budget. The reason for that is: you don’t need any equipment at all, just a brush and the paint. That makes it perfect for low batch manufacturing. Another low-budget advantage of paint is that you can administer a thick layer of it on a bad surface finish and the surface will become smooth.
Apart from that, liquid paint is great for the variety of colors it offers. Powder coatings are not even close to all the different tints you can get from the shops and by mixing different colors.
Now, the powder is different from the liquid paint in a lot of ways. Firstly, it isn’t toxic. However, one of the powder coating problems is, you’ll still have to wear protective gear because inhaling small paint particles in the form of powder isn’t good for your lungs.
Powder coatings are more even, they are less prone to cracking because the powered particles sinter to the base material. With liquid paint, you can get splotches and an uneven surface layer.
Anodizing Vs. Powder Coating
It is actually not exactly correct to compare anodizing and powder coating. The reason for that is that those two processes can complement each other. After anodizing, the surface of the aluminum becomes more porous. You can see it by the way the part becomes milky rather than having a shiny metal surface. These pores are awesome for the powder particles to flow into when they are melted.
Both the anodized aluminum colors and the powder colors are the same variety.
Both techniques create a protective layer for corrosion and wear resistance, however, the result of anodizing is much more durable since the coating is actually part of the material.
Anodizing Vs. Liquid Painting
With painting, the pores created from aluminum anodizing films are not as useful for the surface finish as the powder coatings. The anodized aluminum finishes are much lower compared to the painted ones but if you need a matted texture, there is nothing better.
Anodizing isn’t toxic as painting but it requires a lot of energy and additional equipment so painting is obviously cheaper.
The majority of paints conduct electricity but the porous anodizing finish will decrease the conductivity of the part. You have to take it into account if you are using aluminum parts for electrical appliances.
Conclusions
Liquid Painting, Powder Coating and Anodizing each take a great niche in aluminum part protection. All of them are good for corrosion resistance and painting and powder increase the aesthetic looks of the part and increase its surface finish. Anodizing works that way only in conjunction with the powder coating. Basically, with the biggest budget, you should use both anodizing and powder to get maximum protection and even some wear resistance. Painting is great if you really want to get original with the color or if you are just starting out and don’t have a lot of resources for the expensive equipment or if your batch is too low to invest in that. Just don’t forget the protective gear or you can get serious headaches or even worse conditions. The Same thing is about powder coating. You don’t want to inhale the powder.
No matter what form of visual models to final production units, at WayKen, we can offer complete in-house finishing services while providing the best surface treatment solution for you. To find more industrial powder coating services for your custom prototypes, you also can easily request a quote through our website.
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