Anodizing Case Study: Fixing Surface Issue.

3 Critical Points:

💰 Weight is Money: Profiles are sold by weight.

🚩 Caustic Soda: It hides defects but "eats" your mass.

💡 Mechanical Etching: Removes lines, preserves 99% weight. .

Field Operation: veryfing shots removal while SAT is ongoing.

In this video is shown media removal inside mechanical etching process for architectural profiles.

HERE to analyze your current losses or full technical analysis read below👇

The Hidden Cost of Chemical Etching. 

In the aluminum extrusion industry, profits are tied directly to the weight of the finished product. However, traditional anodizing lines rely on aggressive caustic soda baths to remove die lines and surface defects. This chemical process is essentially "eating" your profit: for every minute a profile spends in the tank, it loses mass, so you lose money.

The shift to mechanical etching isn't just about speed—it’s about preserving the weight of the aluminum you sell.

Technical Analysis: Weight Retention vs. Chemical Erosion.

Integrating a mechanical stage—as shown in the video—fundamentally changes the economics of the anodizing line:

1. Eliminating Material Loss issue.

 Profiles are sold by weight. Caustic soda removes aluminum to hide defects, effectively reducing the sellable weight of every single profile. Mechanical etching, on the other hand, prepares the surface through high-speed impact and abrasion that does not reduce the weight of the profile. You keep the aluminum you produced for selling not to dissolve it in the chemical bath.

2. The "2-Minute" Activation Surface Rule.

By standardizing the surface mechanically, the chemical tank's role is reduced to a simple "activation" step.

• Traditional process: 20+ minutes of chemical erosion (significant weight loss).

• Mechanical + Chemical: Just 2 minutes of chemical immersion. In such a short window, the soda has no time to significantly affect the mass of the profile. You achieve the required chemical activation for the anodizing layer while retaining 99% of the original weight.

  
  

3. Drastic Reduction in Sludge (OPEX).

Weight lost in the tank doesn't just disappear—it turns into aluminum hydroxide sludge. By reducing chemical etching time by 90%, you simultaneously:

• Save the cost of the lost aluminum.

• Save the cost of the caustic soda used to dissolve it.

• Save the massive costs of sludge treatment and disposal by 90% for the same quantity of profiles anodized.

  
  

Impact on TCO & EBITDA for Anodizing.

For a plant handling high-volume extrusion, the math is simple: less aluminum dissolved equals more aluminum sold. When you combine the weight retention with the 90% reduction in cycle time (from 20 to 2 minutes), the impact on the plant’s EBITDA is immediate and measurable.

The system shown in the video, capable of handling profiles up to 800mm x 300mm, is designed to protect your margins by ensuring that the metal you extrude is the metal you invoice.

Technical Process Evaluation.

If you are still relying on long chemical etching cycles, you are likely losing a percentage of your turnover in the tanks. Let's analyze your current weight-loss data and cycle times to calculate the ROI of shifting to a mechanical pretreatment strategy.

Full SAT Analysis: Mechanical etching and media removal for aluminum architectural profiles.

Here to better understand this process and to discuss the critical question about your plant size; as the process is extremely cheap to run (OPEx), the CAPEX of the equipment is not, so should be carefully evaluated.

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