Mount fittings fading

[Davey-T]

Since starting solar about a year ago I notice that all the black anodized fittings on my mounts are fading to a gold colour including the clamshell on the LS60 which you might hope would be Sun proof.

Is this normal or just cheap anodizing ?

Dave

[ronin]

It may not be overly surprising, the colour is achieved by adding dye to the actual anodising process, and dyes tend to fade in sunlight over time.

As best I recall the anodising process causes the surface layer to harden but become porus, the dye/colouring is added for appearance.

There are also a few methods of anodising and maybe (probably) some are better then others.

However it seems that the colour is added as a dye or colouring and so I guess will fade in sunlight.

[Merlin66]

Have the same problem with the Heq5 and NEQ 6 mounts.

The black bits are now golden!!!!

Put it down to poor anodizing.

[Stu_2011]

Hi

Yes with anodising the natural surface oxide on aluminium is artificially grown by an electrochemical method to produce a thick oxide layer. This oxide layer is porous (think of a bunch of straws held together but on a sub-micron scale) and these tubular shaped pores can be filled with dyes to achieve colour. Some dyes are better than others, the cheaper dyes are not UV stable and so they fade with time. Black going to gold is a very common problem with the cheaper anodising dyes.

The anodising will still protect the aluminium and it won't corrode, it just won't look as pretty!

Thanks

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