painting titanium

If the piece is big enough use a bench model belt sander or hand held one.

Bob,
Do you have access to a sandblaster? I worked on a project that required bonding to Ti foil and sandblasting worked well and was fast. Foil will curl and needs to be blasted on both sides.

Cliff

Self-etching primer?

"Self-etching primer?"

I've never heard of such a thing.

I don't have any sandblaster, and I don't have any big sanders.

I worked on some thick aluminum one time, and I used a wire brush-wheel in an electric drill. There is a steel flat file. That's about as heavy as the tools I have.

–B.G.–

The grit on sandpaper is much harder than any titanium alloy of any temper. In my experience, sandpaper works great for roughing up titanium. I prefer to use my mini sandblaster airbrush because it is more controllable and I can use stencils to abrade only the areas that will be glued or painted, but the grit that I use with that little mini sandblaster is aluminum oxide, the same stuff as the grit on most kinds of sandpaper.

Realatively tough, but not that hard as compared to knife blade or file .

Every brand of Ti cookpot I have cleaned with a green 3m abrasive pad was scratched mych easier than any Hard Annodized pots. MSR,Snow Peak Evernew, they all scratched easily compared to the HA surfaces..

Based on that,unless the Ti you are working with is specially hardened, I would try the coarse steel wire brush attachment in a drill. The kind made for stripping paint should roughen up Ti nicely. So should course grit Silcon Carbide paper.

Proper cleaning and degreasing of the surface just before painting is also important.

http://www.ehow.com/how_7690993_prepare-titanium-paint.html

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/orthodontics/Unitek/products/bonding-banding/primers/Transbond-SEP/

Rustoleum etching primer should work and is readily available

http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/ad/adee376c-77e7-4a41-a70a-0c36a0d67d1c.pdf

More on rustoleum products

http://www.zinsser.com/cbgimages/documents/Product%20Reference%20Guide%202009.pdf

Wow. Orthodontic solutions!?

I may have to take another trip over to Home Depot.

–B.G.–

Why would you want to paint titanium?

"Why would you want to paint titanium?"

To make it a different color.

–B.G.–

Hi Bob

Titanium has a nice oxide surface. You might be much better advised to clean the surface carefully and then use a suitable primer. I don't think you need to mechanically abrade the surface.

An epoxy paint over a suitable primr will work well. Actually, an epoxy paint over a clean Ti surface will work quite well. Been there.

Cheers

I was hoping to skip so many layers of paint. Weight, you know.

–B.G.–

If you want to color titanium you just need to anodise it. This gives you a pretty strong layer that does not scratch of easily. This can be done two ways.

One is to heat the titanium to red hot. This way you can make your titanium coloured blue.

The second way is more difficult. You will need a bin of battery acid, cathodes, anodes, and a power supply. By putting a current trough the titanium, you can colour it by varying the voltage. This way you can create a very wide spectrum of colours.

Note that when heating titanium, in theory, you will lose some of the mechanicle strength. I haven't noticed this myself. I coloured my titanium utensils using heat. The result was pretty good. For more info, use google.

Best of luck.

maybe heat titanium until it's some color, then quench in water? or oil? To make it harder.

I just spray painted my titanium pot with black barbecue paint. On the bottom. The place where the flame hits came off after a while. The paint lasted long enough that my interest in having my pot black faded and I move on to something else : )

Hardning titanium is not possible by quenching like it is done with steel. It is done by solution heat treating and aging, a more difficult proces that involves prolonged heating at different temperatures.

After anodising with heat, just let it cool by itself. I never noticed any difference in bending resistance after doing this.

I anodized some of my ti tent stakes using nothing more than Diet Coke and some 9v batteries. It's actually pretty straight forward. Here's the article I used for guidance:

http://briangreen.net/2013/08/how-to-anodize-titanium-using-diet-coke.html

I love the Ti anodizing trick. You could use non-diet coke but that might add weight ;)

And no, that technique does not work for aluminum.

To Roger's point: I painted the curved portions of my Ti hooks with bright orange nail polish, and did nothing more than clean them for preparation. The polish has been quite durable.

A few years ago I experimented with anodizing aluminum bottles. So, I am unlikely to go down that rabbit hole again.

Anodizing any metal with dyes will work, but there is a lot of expense. That doesn't make sense for 2 ounces of titanium metal.

–B.G.–

Hey Bob, I renewed my account (but only as a forum member) just to reply to you!

Anodizing titanium is really really easy. Just need a power source with adjustable voltage and diet coke and aluminum foil. I did a write up a while back:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=81108

I read the previous postings. However, nearly all of the anodized titanium that I've seen done is of a fairly faint color. Plus, the color that I need is bright enough that I would need to use a bazillion volts in the acid bath.

That's why I am going after some hard paints in bright colors.

–B.G.–

Trying to signal/direct traffic/aircraft?

"Trying to signal/direct traffic/aircraft?"

No. I believe a signal mirror works best for that.

–B.G.–

Bob,
Have you considered food-safe Powder coating? If there's someone local to you, it shouldn't be an expensive job. the results will be a lot tougher than paint.

Dave

Why does it need to be food-safe?

No food or water will contact this.

–B.G.–