Chemical film coating

I did some really shallow research on line and found fairly short The process sounds kinda simple. I dropped-off some (flashlight /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) parts at my plater last week for electroless nickel, and asked nicely. That resulted in me taking-home this. (I even brought my own vial):

I did a test part- cleaned with aerosol carburator cleaner, and sort of expected to observe a chemical reaction. Nada! The stuff might as well be water (poison water, anyway /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ) Anyway, I applied a thin coating to just wet-out the part and let it dry. It worked! I couldn't scrape it off with a fingernail. I cleaned the rest of the parts, filled 'em up, poured it out, followed by a light shake to remove the excess, let 'em dry, and viola:



Larry

What is that chemical film coating supposed to do for the part? Is it corrosion or abrasion resistant?

Wilkey

vey nice larry!

i believe that is the same stuf used inside of arcs and surefires...correct?

Maybe it's just me, but the site you referred us to about coatings has a BUNCH of very well presented, simple, easy to understand basic information on anodizing, coloring and coating. I bookmarked it.

The first time I ran into the type of coating you are doing was when I had a polished aluminum "sunshade" for a wide-angle lens on my first SLR (1960?). Why someone made a sunshade with a shiny silver finish I have NO idea. I couldn't get flat black paint to stick to it worth a darn, so my dad took it to work (a machine shop) and had one of the other guys 'coat' it.

Actually, he went further than that, and when I got it back the interior had been bead-blasted, coated and finished in a super non-reflective flat black paint of some sort. I had that thing for many years, and while the shiny outside eventually got all scarred from hard use, the interior was always beautifully non-reflective.

Those 'bodies' (CR2?) in your pic look good, and the coating seems to have taken quite nicely, Larry. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Should protect the interiors quite well from corrosion, and keep a non-conductive film from forming, I suspect.

Hey, Larry - where can I get me some of that stuff? It would look nice in the inside of the Fireflies... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Not to mention, it would be in keeping with doing a top-notch job of making these lights...

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DSpeck said:
Hey, Larry - where can I get me some of that stuff? It would look nice in the inside of the Fireflies... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Not to mention, it would be in keeping with doing a top-notch job of making these lights...

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Woo---Hoo! I like how you think Doug!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

The coating serves to prevent the naturally-occuring oxide film aluminum eventually gets. Anodizing is kind of an artificial process to produce a thicker, more durable version. Electrical conductivity is improved for threads and other areas requiring it, which is presumably why SF and Arc use it.

DSpeck, I *think* you could have the fireflys chem-filmed all over and then anodized while masking the insides. The anodize process seems to ignore chem film- goes right through/over it. Talk to your anodizer- (real nice, and he might give you some. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif )

Larry

larry, any ideas how the chemfilm acts as a thermal conductor? impairs or improves?

Larry, I tried doing the HA3 over Chemkote (whatever Arc uses) on the Arc Greys, and it came out very badly. I had to remove the Chemkote to get even a decent result, not the best I've seen.

I'll ask them about getting/buying some of the solution, though. Thanks! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Roth,

The class 3 version forms a very thin film- doesn't seem to interfere with threads. It is a coating, and would probably detract from heat flow under an LS slug. I doubt it would have any noticable effect on a flashlight (like a MMM or something.)

Larry

thanks larry /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

actually, i was thinking about using in on the inside of mmm's or mm's, and on the lip of a dat2zip pill (providing it gave proper thermal conductance). i was hoping (though no too highly), that it might help the thermal transmission, but as it doesnt, my idea isn't that great /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif