Hope you don't mind my posting here. Here's plans I wrote up a while ago and it works very nice.
DIY 9v battery Titanium anodizer
Simple project, build a Titanium anodizer from 9v batteries. Plenty of vids on youtube, but here are some simple pictures.
Here's the whole setup, using a plastic bin from a wire rack storage unit. Rubbermaid containers will work fine. Higher voltages CAN kill you, especially around water. I always wear nitrile coated gloves just to be safe.
I used a 6" piece of stainless angle for the negative side(anode) attached to a wire running to the batteries. It should attach to the red wire, which attached to the negative side of the battery. I know, it's confusing. I drilled and tapped the angle and connected the wire to it with a ring terminal. I used heat shrink tubing to cover the copper wire.
Home made titanium clip to hold the piece you want to anodize. Anything will work if you only do half the piece at a time. When anodizing you don't want any copper/steel on the positive side(cathode) exposed to the electrolyte. They will conduct instead of the titanium and it will take much longer. With a titanium clip, you can put the tips of the clip in the electrolyte. It works well to move the clip from one end to the other to get an even anodizing.
9v batteries, plain and simple power supply. I got a 99¢ 9v connector from Radio Shack and attached longer wires to it for the leads. Remember, negative goes to the electrolyte and positive goes to the titanium. This is the opposite of etching steel.
Here you can see the unit in action with 1" of water and a tablespoon of TSP to form your electrolyte. Trisodium Phosphate, a cleaner found in the paint section of most big hardware stores.
You can see the hydrogen and oxygen bubbles coming off this piece. That's call electrolysis.
Here are 1/8" titanium rods anodized with different numbers of batteries. You can always anodize with a higher voltage. If you have bronze and want blue, just anodize over it. If you have blue and want bronze, you will have to sand off the blue and start over. A 3M scrubber pad works great for this.
Here's Mr Titanium's logo, which shows the voltage and resulting colors.
Anodizing is a result of both voltage and time. It takes a certain amount of time to anodize something. Less time and it will only get partially through the spectrum up to the full color a voltage should return. If you anodize at 45 volts but very briefly you will get bronze, maybe purple. If you want a transition effect you can slowly pull the titanium out of the electrolyte once it starts to turn bronze. Dark blues and violets are sensitive to fingerprints.
Hope your enjoyed today's presentation of Fun with Electricity!
Last edited by zaph1; 12-30-2010 at 01:40 PM.
