Bike Decals — Anodizing Titanium

One of my favorite parts of building a bike on a Titanium frame (aside from the light weight and smooth ride) is the potential for anodizing the frame with fun graphics.

Again, Davidson Bicycles does an awesome job of this:

Davidson Bicycles — 2020/12/15

Firefly Bicycles also does some very cool work with anodized graphics.

One of Firefly’s bikes

The look is awesome. I wanted to figure out how to anodize titanium so I bought a piece of Titanium from OnlineMetals (creative name) and set up a test with a decal I ordered from StickerMule. I was a little worried it would be tough to anodize just the logo, because I had heard that it’s tough to contain the spatial extent of the anodization reaction. After trawling the web a bit I came up with the following solution:

• Put a vinyl transfer sticker with logo / text of interest on the titanium
• Paint over the decal with Dykem Steel Blue Layout Fluid. This stuff goes on like nail polish (and apparently you could use nailpolish for this purpose as well, but Dykem seems easier to work with from what I’ve read). This is to protect the titanium that you do not want to anodize
• Let the Dykem dry and then carefully peel off the sticker, revealing the titanium in the shape of your sticker
• Connect the (+) electrode to titanium somewhere away from the spot you want to anodize. Connect the ( - ) electrode to a foam brush

I found this to be a nice way to apply the anodization…it can be a little uneven/finicky if you apply different pressures because (for reasons I don’t understand) the color is dependent on the distance of the electrode to the titanium you are anodizing (otherwise it’s completely dependent on Voltage).

• Dip the foam brush in an electrolyte solution (I used 1tsp of Borax in 1/2C water)
• Turn the power supply on and dial in your voltage — note: color depends on voltage.

Voltage chart for titanium anodization

This is how it went for me, which is fairly in line with the above.

I tried the whole process and had pretty good success anodizing my company logo onto a piece of scrap titanium!

Logo anodized on titanium @ 30V

I went a little past my Dykem border (hence the little brown smudge in the top right corner). Will be more careful next time, when it’s on my actual bike frame!!

I haven’t tried removal yet, but I think Whink or some other kind of rust remover should work…