Interesting electronics idea...

[NeoMoses Amateur Metal Finisher Find all posts View Profile Close NeoMoses]

http://www.mpja.com/productview.asp?product=8412+KT

http://www.mpja.com/productview.asp?product=14311+TE

Here's what I'm thinking... wouldn't it be cool to have voltage monitoring for constant current anodizing? Here's what I'm envisioning: Data monitoring coming in from the Parallel, Serial, or Game port of a computer... fed into a program, possibly labview or MS Excel or something... A graph of Voltage vs. Time would be generated, updated real time (if possible). Polling would be done at 6-10 second intervals, and a 1 minute average would be displayed on the screen... Once the one minute average had dropped for 2 consecutive minutes, the program would sound an audible alarm, letting you know that PAR had been reached.

Now, I know that data acquisition systems/software are not cheap. The Yokigawa, HBM, and Etas systems that I've worked with would make most home anodizers faint if they saw the price tags. I'm looking at ways to accomplish this for under $50. The links to above hardware may allow this, but I'm not all that well studied on electronics.

Keep in mind, this would be an ideal solution for me, it may not be the best solution for a given price. Does anyone want to help make this happen?

[NeoMoses Amateur Metal Finisher Find all posts View Profile Close NeoMoses]

well, from the underwhelming response, I think I may be lazier than most. I'm seriously considering purchasing that multimeter and seeing what I can do with it, if I can get it to output data to a realtime graph.

yeah, I know, I like automated data acquisition.

[Fireblade Amateur Metal Finisher Find all posts View Profile Close Fireblade]

Well, I have never anodized but it is something I am considering taking up here in a few months. I see where you are coming from as I do read up on this forum. I think it would work great with what you are trying to accomplish, by doing this it would allow you to work or prep another piece while this one is being done. Freeing up your time and making it more productive. Your like me, trying to figure out another way to do something, and like you were talking about the "industrial" setups and there price tags, makes ya wonder why things cost so much. If I were you, if you don;t get any feedback on this topic here, I would do a search for DIY electronics, and see what you come up with. There is a site I check out from time to time, called DIY EFI (I think) and there are some real electronic whizs' on there. Might be a thing to consider. Good luck and keep us informed