hate to ask

[terence638]

Im getting into building aluminum T-Tops for boats and i find my self struggling with welding the annodized aluminum so I thought to give a try to buying the pipe bare welding it up and then annodizing the entire structure at once so obviously i need large enogh tanks that would accomodate the structure but my real Q is what is teh exact procces of annodizing from start to finnish and is this a feasable idea?
Thanks
Terence

[buckeyevs]

Yea, anodized aluminum doesn't weld. The reason is because anodized aluminum doesn't conduct electricity, or at least not very well. If your talking torch welding then that might be a different story.

[bryan93644]

hi,

you need to grind off the anodised layer where you plan to weld, and where you are going to put your groundclamp, and then its fine. You need to grind it away for oxy aswell, the the anodized layer melts at about double the temperature of aluminum (i think its about double, its to high none the less, by the time you melt it youll be way to hot and gouge out all the underlying material). but yeah- lots of grinding.