sleepy super burnt out update...
first off, anodizing was a success... Martha Stewart would refer to it as "a good thing"... but uggg,,, took a lot to get there... the first production run was just clear anodized, this is going to replace the polished BB... not that we will not make more raw polished ones like ever... but these anodized ones have some big advantages...
A: they are like a bazillion times harder and just don't scratch...
B: they don't show finger prints easy and are super easy to clean.. 
K: they don't really NEED oil to slide open nice.. we still oil them when we put um together, and will recommend they get oil to keep them working smoothly, but they don't 
SUPER MEGA need it like the raw aluminum ones do.
It makes our product better, stronger, and easier to maintain... so it's now standard...  It is however, a big fat pain in the ... to do 
(well, to do really well...) and it takes more of just about everything, man power, prep time, and i guess we need to pay the anodizers too...ehhh, they'll send me a bill at some point i guess.... 
anywhoo.... first thing we have to do is mill them a little different, this is just slightly different code to prepare for the anodizing, and mill a hole in the electrical compartment to bolt them to the rack... then, just like with the polished ones we have to mate a slide cover to a body and sand them together...here is where things start to change... as they are going to be separated from each other on the racks
we need to number them so we can put them back together after they are anodized.. we'll probably figure a good way to do this later but for the present a dremel will do just fine...
now we have to take them apart again and clean um... every bit of cutting fluid needs to get the heck off befor we bead blast so the oil isn't impregnated into the aluminum and the bead will texture the surface uniformly... soooo first they take a dip in the ultra sonic vat...
and then a rinse in the sink...
and then blown off with compressed air... wow, i had to do all this crap, and now i'm reliving it in this update... kinda of depressing.....
the bead blaster doesn't really change the dimensions of the surface but it super will screw up the threads and make them near impossible to clean, and as we have to plug the threads anyway for the anodizing that might as well just happen now...
and apparently i thought it was exciting enough to take TWO pictures.... my phone has like 32gigs so what do i care... i'll take as many pictures as i damn well please...
now for the bead blast, it's like sandblasting but with really really tiny glass balls that peen the surface of the aluminum leaving a smooth happy satin finish... 
 
in a perfect world the glass SHOULD bounce off the surface, but some of the glass will shatter and the glass dust will impregnate the surface... so they go back into the ultrasonic cleaner and the glass is literally exploded out... it's kinda neat to watch... but in this dip we have to hang the boxes so they don't touch any surface in the tank or the vibration will burn into the surface..
ok, so now the glass is out but the water in the ultrasonic vat is full of floaty glassy bits..so we needz to rinse them one last time.. oh the joy!
and then blow um off again...  
FINALLY, now they get bolted to the rack with titanium cap screws... I'v been waiting to do this soooo long...
here's one of the racks that holds the slide covers all loaded up..
and some of the main body racks all full,
so then i load um up into the carmobile and drive down to salt lake city and hand um over to the anodizers... I got to pick um up the next day and they look better than we hoped.. sure, it's a little depressing that that they are still just aluminum colored, but that kinda was the point for the clear run...  pics don't do um all that much justice.. but here is the slide cover rack back in our shop. Notice they ain't engraved? I'll fix that in a sec..
and the bodies after the plugs got all pulled out, you can see the area where they were racked, that was the electrical path for the anodizing.
So another suck thing about our new process is that the slide cover now goes from two times it has to be loaded into a machine, to three times it has to be loaded into a machine...super lame... but anyway, they get loaded back into Ruby on the Vacu-Suck 2000 pallet...
the rack for these used a titanium screw to hold the slide cover into place and provide the electrical path for the anodizing, and that was right over where the ball lock goes.. so she has to mill the ball lock and then do the engraving... here i had to stop and think, these are technically rev 3s, but still, this is a big change,,, so i had to change somthin'.... they are now engraved Rev 3.a
neat-o
K- so the actual finished stuffz i took pictures with my actual "
not phone" camera, and them pics an't on me at the moment... but they are on the on the BB web site.... I actually have a little more to update 'bout, but it's like 3 somthin' in the morning and my bedtimes at 4 so i gotta wrap it up... For the present, despite the added cost and labor of all this we are NOT going to raise the price on the clear anodized BB (and i hope not anytime soon)... The colored ones however will cost more and here is why... First off they cost twice as much to anodize as the clear, it's a whole different process and that's out of my hands.. Second, there will be a higher fail rate than with clear anodizing, some percent of them will simply go in the trash as more can go wrong...  But that will be next run, and i'll post how that go's....
oh damn, i'm going to hit that couch so hard....