Bad Anno jobs

[Xmagterror]

Nobody llistens to me around here do they?

PK DOES NOT DO PAINTBALL GUNS ANYMORE - I tried to get mine done there, even tried doing an end around to get it in, and I had 4 people tell me they do not do graphic paintball anodizing anymore. 1 guy said yeah we can do a solid color if its ina batch with other parts - and then his manager nixed that and said no, there isnt anyone here that does that type of work anymore.


Styg

Well thats news to me because i just got my XMAG back from there a couple of months ago and damn........its awesome!!!!! Just gotta know the right people in the company i guess! LOL

[StygShore]

Guess so, becasue 5-6 months ago, they told me they dont do it anymore

Styg

[evildead420]

isnt PK in san Jose Ca? i should go have a stop by there if they are, i work in SJ all the friggen time.

oh yea, I call shens. Pics now boy

[geekwarrior]

oh yea, I call shens. Pics now boy

seconded

[91Foxtrot]

I will second Rainman229. He anno'd my UMF. Now this is the only part I have ever had anno'd, but I was impressed with the outcome and it was a really good price. My experience went something like this:
-We worked out the details.
-I shipped my frame out to him.
-I gave it about 3-4 days before I wrote and asked if he had received it.
-He responds that the anno is done and he put it in the mail the next day.

I think the total time from when I put it in the mail to the time I had it back in my hands was about 7 days.

Of course, I only had 2 pieces (frame and trigger). Might be longer if you are getting an entire marker done.

[Rudz]

poor poor styg..its ok, its still beautiful..

[thefool]

The reason why all these anodizing jobs are so bad now is because of the anno price wars that have been going on with all the shops on the internet. Just pay the money and have PK do it...its well worth it. all these small shops just give you the slam bam thank you mam anno job because they have to to make any money at it. the cost of the materials for anno is just about nothing. the most expensive part of it is stripping the old anno off. the acid and dye is cheap and lasts forever. I would say you can reanodize a gun for about 5 bucks in materials. Its all labor.

I use to anodize guns for teams locally and i did really good quality work but once all the internet price wars started nobody wanted to pay me 275 a gun anymore. I just told them to pay 110 and see what it looks like. The jokes on them. I dont reanodize guns any more because it just takes to much time to strip, polish and then finally do the anno. I only anodize new things now. it comes off my cnc mill.... i do a quick polish and then it goes in the tank...easy.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND SEND IT TO PK!!!!!!!!!!!!! BEST MONEY YOU WILL EVER SPEND ON YOUR GUN.

While this is true you must also ask yourself how much you value your time as an annodizer and how much time a given order will take. Figure that each part will take 5 min of strip time, 5-40 of polishing/finishing time, 5-10 preanno bath time, 5-40 dyeing time depending on the desired effect (maybe even more), and finally 2-5 post dying sealing, follwed by about 10-15 min of quality contol for the batch.

So now, even if we assume there is no materials cost, the most basic anno will take you at least 30 minutes per part no matter how small. Keep in mind this is for a single color dust part with no surface work other than bead blasting.

so for 10 parts, you will spend at least 5 man hours doing that anno, the accual prossess takes much longer, figure at least an hour in the anno tank, 30 min sealing, 30+ min dying and stripping, the accual process from start to finish will take no less than 7 hours.

The lowest price ive ever seen for a job like this was gruntbulls promotional offer where they charged $55 for it. Im suprized they even started that low. Think about it, $55/7 ~$7.80 an hour.

You could make more working in a chain somewhere and there you wouldn't start in the hole thousands of dollars for equipment.

[paintball-lizard]

Im going to use Slothball in the UK i have heard good things about thier work and i have seen some pieces they have done very sweet indeed.Only because im in the UK.

[StygShore]

annoprobs

OK, this is taking the same pic I posted for MOTM.

I posted the main section of the gun, and pointed out issues that show up in this picture, I did not take this picture to specifically catch the flaws or anything. I can take more detailed pics of specific issues if anyone would like.

I can do the same for the other side, but it is just similar issues

you can make the judgement if you would have been happy with the work or not.

[going_home]

FBM Factory aka Fireball Mountain

I had a thread on this somewhere but here it is again.
I sent 3 complete markers, barrels and all.
2 were to be Xvalve blue, but gloss, (and yes I sent a blue Xvalve)
and 1 was to be gloss black.
They anodized the two Chord bodies and feednecks in 1 batch,
and all the rest of the blue parts in another.
The barrels, rails, trigger frames, DW CF foregrips, all match the Xvalve but the bodies were almost purple. I didnt send the drops and ASA's, they just happened to match.
I emailed them 3 times and never got a response.
Chord V2 UMF:

Chord V1 UMF:

And heres the obvious screwup, black marker, blue trigger.
Karta UMF:

So stay away from FBM, they dont do too good and wont respond if you are unhappy.
I never in correspondence was ever rude or used bad language.
I dont do that anyways.

[thefool]

OK, this is taking the same pic I posted for MOTM.

I posted the main section of the gun, and pointed out issues that show up in this picture, I did not take this picture to specifically catch the flaws or anything. I can take more detailed pics of specific issues if anyone would like.

I can do the same for the other side, but it is just similar issues

you can make the judgement if you would have been happy with the work or not.

kinda hard tell. From that pic, the work looks well done, exept for the feedneck. On the other hand, remember different alloys work differently and react differently to the same dye so its often difficult to get a good match.

The milky white was probably a spot where he didn't clean the part fully between surface prep and anno.

White around the edges is the same thing.

Sloppy masking is excusable i think because it is very hard to get things to line up 100% and it doesnt look that sloppy to me.

[StygShore]

Yeah, Masking on this side is not as bad as the other, and the laser hits the lines on this side. This was the MOTM pic, so I took the pic from the "good" side.

What I dont understand is I asked for the breach and feed to be redone, was told the breach and feed would be redone, and... the breach and feed were never redone. That would have resolved the majority of problems I have with the gun, and Lornes laser wouldnt have had to look bad from trying to bridge the gap to line the words up ( if you look at the original pics before the re-anno the letters are pretty much dead on )

I have been alternating oiling and buffing trying to get the milky spots out, seems to be in the anodize itself.

As far as different alloys... this is a CCM feedneck - they come from CCM gloss finished ( this one came raw because it was going to be annoed ), and my barrel came from Sanchez Machine black gloss finished, why couldnt they be done in a black gloss finish?

I never complained about the different shades of Red or Black. As it was for this job alone - the battery packs were done 3 or 4 times, frame was done 2 or 3 times, body was done 2 times, Breach was done 1 time, and feed ring was done twice - these parts saw the anno bath and dye so many times, the chance of getting them all to match was slim to none.

Before you say "OH well you got your moneys worth!" - the parts were all redone do to the following problems in no particular order, fade parts were anodized upside down, parts were assembled wrong so the fade didnt match, anodize/sealer failed( after the cool pics were taken ) causing milky spots, fading, white edges.

Styg

[CoolHand]

. . . . . anodize/sealer failed( after the cool pics were taken ) causing milky spots, fading, white edges.

Styg

That right there is the main reason we always used heat to seal our parts. The dippable cold sealers sometimes go to crap on you.

Of all the problems we had with ano, having one go to hell AFTER it had been sealed was never one.

Our biggest buggaboo was always surface prep. We had a lot of trouble with random spots of "something" that wouldn't come off. We used acid etches, quick lye dips, degreasers and soaps of every sort, all to no avail. Sometimes we would just get mystery spots that refused to take dye.

That was really frustrating.

Everything else was cake (though a lot of work), but those unpredictable spots were like a plague. They'd show up one at a time, or hundreds at a time, with no rhyme or reason. For two years we chased them, and never could isolate a single cause. Sometimes they'd go away if you redid the parts, sometimes they'd still be there after five or six strippings. It made no sense at all.

I understand why anodizers have trouble, it's tough as hell, but with all our problems, we never let parts go out the door that I wasn't proud of. Shipping some of the things I've seen here and on PBN to customers is beyond excuse.

[coreyander]

I dont have pictures of it anymore and it probably wouldnt be noticable, but when I bought my emag karta body and rail a long time ago, when I got it from DW, the rail and body had fingerprints in the ano where someone had handled it w/o gloves after desmut/cleaning rinses. I never said anything about it and you had to look at them closely to see. They probably wouldnt show up in pictures because they were black fingerprints on a gloss black body.

I wasnt that happy about it after spending 300+ and waiting a while to get the body.

Ive heard of FBM screwing up a few jobs. Namely the DC emag that was being sold around here, and some guys timmy that got turned into a paperweight and FBM refused to accept responsibility for. The guy ended up not being able to ever use that gun again.

[coreyander]

also to add.

going home...the reason some of those parts couldve turned out a different hue of blue is because of the different series of aluminum used for the parts. I think DW may use 6061, which shouldve matched any other 6061 ran for the same amount of time and the same batch of dye used for the coloring. But....the feedneck and triggers and things of the like can be from a differenct series of aluminum. I know my CCM one is made from 3000 series which doesnt turn the same color as say 6061. I made the anodizer (gruntbull) aware of that, and he got it to match perfectly. They even stripped a type 3 ano part (sidewinder swivel and bottom nut) and reanodized w/ no probs at all.

STygshore.....the milky white spots, bare aluminum showing on the edges are probably the only bad things I would consider. That is a CCM feedneck which is 3000 series aluminum, which is why it looks brown and not red like the body.....6061.

The more I see bad ano jobs, the more I am glad I went w/ gruntbull. :)