jnbsystems,
If you're going to use your 13.6 V 30 A switcher, you will have to use light bulbs or power resistors. The lamp dimmer method will only work on an unregulated power supply like a battery charger.
If you look at the anodization curves in the technical reference at the rear of the LCD instructions, you will get an idea of how much and how soon you will need to change the number of light bulbs. Using the curves for 3 A/sq.ft. as an example; it seems to me that you will want maybe 3 light bulbs in series at startup, and as the process continues, short out one bulb, and then the second, within the first 15 minutes. The third bulb stays in the circuit for the whole anodization time, as it provides the final current limiting. I've never used this light bulb method for current limiting (seems to be too much work to me) since I always use a real current source for anodizing. You will have to do some experimenting. If you need help figuring out which bulbs to use post that here. The information you will need to supply is:
1. The surface area of the piece you are anodizing.
2. The current density you intend to anodize the piece at.
3. Assuming 12 V automotive bulbs, the current or wattage of the bulbs you want to use.
BTW, MSC Industrial Supply (
www.mscdirect.com) has a cheap digital multimeter on sale for $6.95. This unit will be adequate for monitoring the voltage and current. To monitor the current, you will need some sort of a 0.1 Ohm power resistor, at least 10 Watts in size.