(10-17 step 3):
Today I snuck out of the office a little early (late days the
first three days of the week make it a bit easier!) My focus was
to get started with the alodining. I've got all the smaller items
wired-up to dunk in the buckets, so I made it a point to get those
done. One thing to mention here... we originally took the frugal
approach to alodining. We considered getting the powder and
mixing it, but there was a minimum buy requirement that made it
impractical, so we went the Alodine 1201 (premixed) route. It
comes in 1 gal bottles (quart bottles also I think). According to
the manufacturers sheet, for dipping parts the product gets diluted 1:2
with water (same with the alumiprep but its 1:3). I don't think
we'll go this route again because it basically takes at least 10
minutes to get the job done, and this time is getting progressively
longer, an indication the chemicals are "aging" and in need of
replacement. I can do about 6-8 parts at a time in the buckets,
but it still seems to take forever!! I think we'll just go full
strength in the future, mainly due to the time, but even after all that
time we're still not getting that deep gold color that it should
be. One of the reasons we went the dilution route was because we
needed the volume to cover parts in the buckets. Finding out that
1 gal of chemicals could be diluted to make 3 gal seemed to be
perfect... but its winding up to be a time killer! We'll spend
the extra $$ for a couple extra gallons next time to save the
frustration!
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