Anodizing?

[MattC9]

Hey thanks for all the great responses guys, i really appreciate it. We don't have our hearts set on anything and were exploring our options, and yes we were looking into other things like powder coating.

[sanddrag]

It won't be as durable as anodizing or powder coating but you might even want to try your hand at painting if you can afford the cure time. A little detail spray gun is cheap if you have a sufficient compressor to run it. An enamel paint like Rustoleum or some sort of farm and implement paint can be rather durable, and can lay down pretty nice when thinned and sprayed. Of course, all the success is in the prep work. With bumpers nowadays, a lot of parts of the robot never see any real contact, so paint may work out.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

you might even want to try your hand at painting

Body shops in the area might be interested, and car paint is quite durable. A quick robot demonstration will get them excited - body guys are engineers at heart. New 2-part paints cure in hours, too.

A friend once painted his car with a brush. Wasn't bad from 10 feet away.

[Doug G]

We tried to anodizing a few years back in the off season and quickly realized we didn't want to ever deal with it during build season. It's a lot of prep to setup and if you can't keep an area setup for it, it's just a hassle. We purchased the home brew kit from these folks...

http://www.focuser.com/anodize.html

It's an interesting process to teach the students about. Keep in mind you still need to get the acid, power source, heaters/hot plate. Don't forget the gloves, goggles, and safety spill kit!!

[JamesCH95]

Don't forget the structural implications of anodizing. Aluminum fatigue life, which is already bad, gets very bad after it is anodized. Clearly it's not an issue for many teams, but it's something to consider, even just out of principle.