Cav wrote:From stuff I've done in materials and the in-house anodising we do I always thought it was pretty much just a surface coating
at my old company we used birmingham hard anodising almost every day ,the geek there told me all about it which was nice
It depends on what application the anodising is done for. Corrosion resistance anodising is usually rather shallow in penetration (and can be dyed/coloured). Hard annodising is primarily for wear resistance and is usually done to a greater depth. It is all a function of the current applied during the process and the type of electrolyte used. I have no expertise is how deep they annodise sprockets, but from my aircraft days I know the hard annodising gave very good wearability properties (equal to case hardened steel) to components while retaining the lightweight advantage of aluminium.
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