Background
Titanium metal has the neat property that its surface can be anodized using electricity. This oxide layer provides additional durability to the metal, but more importantly, it has different colors depending on the voltage applied to the metal! Voltages typically range from DC 12V – 120V, with the color changing throughout the entire range of voltages. A few weeks ago my friend Rosemary asked me if I knew anything about anodizing as she wanted to anodize a tool she has, so I decided to help her out! The biggest challenge of anodizing is getting the higher-voltage DC for the upper range of color. To get this, I decided I’d make a beefy full bridge rectifier which is powered from my Variac to control output voltage.
Assembly
All parts were gotten from my local electronics supply store, Skycraft. I did some rough ripple calculations to spec my capacitor bank size and went to town soldering it together.
Anodizing And Results:
Once I met up with Rosemary we set up the rectifier with a bath of water and baking soda and slowly dipped in the different titanium parts at different DC output voltages. The results speak for themself!
