[sage]

I appreciate and understand your efforts to point out that a lot of things need to be considered in the anodizing process, but I was intentionally trying to avoid the "other" things because I was trying (however poorly) to stress that the 720 rule is a FORMULA as much as it is a RULE ,and to give an example to show it.
I'm not sure the point was made so let me try again.
Say you decide to standardize your process at a CD of 6 and that you will always grow 1mil of ano surface. If you do this then you might as well just say:
"Anodizing takes 120 minutes" and forget about the rule.
Becasue you'll always get 120 minutes as long as you stick with CD of 6 and 1mil using the calculator because it forces you into a particular current to satisfy the 120 minutes and 1mil parameters.
The point I was trying to make (and get someone to confirm my theory on) is that the current does not have to be fixed, and you can, for example, double the current and half the time required because the 720 rule is a FORMULA based on amp-minutes per square foot.
Amp-minutes means you can adjust the amps or the minutes and, as long as you end up with 720 you should get good results. So you don't have to be stuck with 120 minute anodizing jobs on rediculously small items just becasue the calculator says 120 minutes at .03 amps or something ridiculous like that. My theory is that you should be able to double the current to a wopping .06 amps and do the job in 60 minutes or perhaps even 30 or 10 minutes by increasing the current to double or triple what the calculator comes up with (yes - other things considered of course)
You can try this witn the calculator. Increase the "set current", by adjusting the current density number. You'll see that when you have doubled the set current you get half the time. The mils stays the same and obviously the size of the part doesn't change.
Keep in mind I'm not saying this is actually correct in practice. I'm really looking for someone to confirm or deny this theory is true. I'm sure there must be boundary's on this and even other factors like maybe above or below a certain current the anodized layer does not grow properly or something. These are the factors that really need to be considered and pointed out along with the "Rule"
I think it's already been shown that anything from 3-18 A/sqft works to some degree. This is a huge range and if in fact all figures in that range really aren't created equal then I think the pros and cons of anodizing at either end of the range needs to be passes along with the RULE.

I think I've flogged this enough (but I'm still wondering what the answer is)

PS> Thanks for the "remember me box tip"

Sage