Ducker Carlisle Study

Jason Weber, AAC President

AAC’s 2025 Ducker Carlisle study provides a comprehensive look at the North American anodizing market, including demand trends, applications, competitive threats, and growth opportunities. This session will connect the study’s findings to practical opportunities for anodizers.

Beyond the Paycheck: Retention, Engagment and Growth in Aluminum Operations

Zack Wolchesky, Hydro Aluminum

The anodizing industry faces a talent crisis. A generation of skilled operators with decades of institutional knowledge are retiring. Economic pressures like regional labor shortages and changing work/life balance norms make replacing retirees difficult and expensive.Flat hourly raises often trigger wage compression and destroy senior staff morale. To preserve plant stability and protect production margins, management must transition from a culture of compliance to psychological ownership using strategies like:Neutralize High Cost of Living frustration with Total Rewards Statements. Correct wage compression using a competency-based Skill Matrix framework. Non-monetary retention levers such as shift-swapping flexibility. Combat plant floor apathy by eliminating "gotcha" supervision.Shifting focus away from guaranteed overhead liabilities and toward strategic workforce development can bridge skills gaps, lower costly scrap rates, and maintain a motivated, stable front line.

Implementing AI in a Metal Finishing Job Shop: Lessons Learned From an ERP Transformation

Dean Halonen, Steelhead & Mark Spencer, Aacron Anodizing, Inc.

One comment regarding the conference description: while our presentation will certainly include engineering and scientific insights related to anodizing operations, the primary value of the session is more practical in nature. Our focus will be on how anodizing and metal finishing job shops can effectively leverage AI and modern ERP technologies to improve business performance, operational efficiency, customer service, data management, and overall competitiveness. Rather than a deep technical discussion of anodizing science or process engineering, attendees can expect to gain actionable lessons learned from a real-world implementation and practical strategies they can apply within their own operations. We believe this business-oriented perspective will complement the conference's technical content while providing attendees with valuable tools to improve the performance and profitability of their organizations.

Washington Update: Fall Policy Review and Election Outlook

Christian Richter, The Policy Group

This session will provide an overview of Washington's fall policy landscape, examining key White House, regulatory and legislative developments for industry and how the midterm elections could reshape the policy environment heading into 2027.

The Anodizers Response to Secondary Aluminum

Dr. Jude M. Runge, CompCote International

Physical part size and geometry create one of the most difficult challenges to overcome during aqueous cleaning. Sharp angles, surface roughness, blind holes, and deep recesses can hold onto soils, impede solution transfer and make rinsing difficult, resulting in oils/lubes bleeding out further down the process line. Contamination of downstream tanks creates poor part quality and significant downtime to rectify the line. How combining chemistry, equipment and best practices to reduce/eliminate these issues is discussed.

Interfacial Phenomena in Electrochemical Systems: Implications for Anodizing and Surface Control

Kirk Ziegler, University of Florida

Electrochemical processes (e.g., anodizing and electrodeposition) rely on interfacial phenomena that govern morphology, transport, and reaction kinetics. Performance and uniformity are often controlled by coupled effects at the electrode–electrolyte interface. Developing a predictive understanding of these effects remains a challenge for controlling surface structure and functionality in electrochemical systems. This presentation highlights how model systems reveal the mechanisms underlying surface evolution. We examine how transport limitations and kinetic instabilities drive pattern formation during electrodeposition, providing insight into the origins of nonuniform growth and morphological evolution. Finally, results on copper anodization demonstrate how electrolyte composition and additives influence oxide formation and structure. Together, these studies establish a framework for understanding and controlling electrochemical interfaces in anodizing and related surface treatments.

Tuning the Pores

Anodic aluminum oxide has numerous applications, from corrosion protection to nanofabrication of nanostructures made of other metals. All these result from its nanoporous morphology. Since the development of high-quality scanning electron microscopy, it was noted that the nanopores can vary due to the applied operating conditions. It is well-known that the greater the anodizing voltage, the greater the pores and interpore distance. However, some other relations have also been recently found, like the impact of viscosity on the morphological features, or the influence of the hydrodynamic radius of the electrolyte anion on the pores. Moreover, for numerous applications, it is crucial to have highly ordered, honeycomb-like ordering of the pores. It is important to quantify the ordering, based on various approaches, as well as to find how the operating conditions, like type, concentration, and temperature of the electrolyte, as well as anodizing voltage and duration of the process, influence not only the pores’ size, but also their ordering.

Expanding the Porous Alumina Engineering Toolbox for Nano-optics: Multiscale Morphological Tuning via Square-Wave Pulse Anodizing

Mikhail Pashchanka, Warsaw Institute of Technology

Individual control of nanopore diameter, spacing, and hexagonal ordering in porous anodic alumina (PAA) is essential for designing advance photonic materials and meta-materials, plasmonic surfaces and SERS substrates. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation of square-wave pulsed direct current (PDC) anodizing for selective morphological optimization across multiple length scales. PDC anodizing decouples the hexagonal ordering and pore diameters that are polarization controlled in DC anodizing; pore sizes are reduced by up to 60%, while pulse frequency governs well-ordered pore array dimensions. With PDC, visible PAA property changes (e.g., transparency differences) result solely from structural modifications rather than compositional variations. Demonstrated versatility across different electrolyte types and no requirement for complicated aluminum pretreatment, make pulse anodizing a promising tool for optimizing PAA-based optical nanostructures.

This paper was originally published in ACS Omega http://pubs.acs.org/journal/acsodf

Cite This: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.6c02015

Microstructure and Electrolytic Color

DR. Jude M. Runge, CompCote International

Variations in the appearance of the welds on anodized and electrolytically colored assemblies, comprised of 6063 T6 hollow extrusions and welded with alloy 5356 rod, were studied to determine the root cause for the appearance quality issues. Optical and metallographic analysis followed by Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrographic Analysis determined that variations in weld microstructure directly impacted local areas of anodic oxide growth, causing variations in electrolytic color uptake in the welds. Additional, more in-depth work on this subject, incorporating additional analytical techniques, will be presented at ET ’27.

Anodizing to Specifications

Casey Selle Charging, Aacron Anodizing, Inc.

Maintaining proper communication between an Anodizer and their customer is critical to running a successful anodizing line. This talk will focus on connecting with your customers and reviewing ways that you can educate your customers on the "Language of Anodizing". We will review explaining your line and capabilities to the customer, how to meet the customer's needs, and specifications to keep you and your customer on the same page. 

Maintaining Peak Performance: Best Practices in Aluminum Pretreatment Cleaning, Etching, and Deoxidizing

Kevin Janis, Reliant Aluminum Products

Effective pretreatment is foundational for consistent, high-quality anodizing results. Proven best practices for maintaining peak performance are explored across essential pretreatment processes. Insights presented into cleaning techniques to remove soils/oils/contaminants, etching strategies to achieve unform surface appearance and controlled material removal, and deoxidizing/desmutting methods to ensure clean, active aluminum surface. Emphasis placed on process control parameters, bath maintenance, troubleshooting, and bath performance evaluation. Best practices are shown to improve process consistency, first-pass yields, bath longevity, and overall profitability.

Sealing Smarter: Practical Lessons for more Reliable Anodize Finishing

Judson Delancy, Surventis

The sealing step is critical to anodize performance, appearance, and long-term durability, but it is often treated as a routine final stage rather than a process that deserves close control. This presentation will share practical field observations, troubleshooting insights, and operational lessons learned from real anodizing environments. Topics will include seal bath control, temperature and pH awareness, water quality, contamination risks, drag-in and drag-out considerations, defect prevention, and simple habits that help improve consistency across production. The session will also consider new and fresh ways of thinking about sealing, especially where newer approaches may help simplify operations, reduce maintenance burden, and improve process reliability. Attendees will leave with practical takeaways they can use to strengthen process stability, reduce avoidable rework, and improve confidence in finished part performance.

Beyond the Tank: How Analytical Procedures Improve Anodizing Performance

Pinakin Patel, Techevon, LLC

This paper will discuss different analytical methods used to control process tanks in an anodizing line. There will be examples of when common analytical methods must be changed to adapt when process tanks get contaminated. Finally, simple spot tests will be discussed to troubleshoot common problems in anodizing tanks.

From Shop Floor to Search Results: How LinkedIn, AI, and Free Industry Tools Are Redefining How Buyers Find Anodizers

Mark Spencer, AaCron Anodizing

Architects, sourcing managers and engineers now find anodizing partners with a search bar, a LinkedIn feed, or an AI prompt. Explore how anodizing companies remain visible, credible, and competitive in this landscape without large marketing budgets using LinkedIn as a technical credibility platform, trade publication opportunities, AAC’s marketing resources, and AI content creation to signal your expertise. AaCron’s experience shows what does/doesn’t work. A framework is presented for making your company’s expertise discoverable and findable online.

Anodizing From a Chemical Perspective

Dr. George Oh, Quaker Houghton

Understanding fundamental chemistry concepts clarifies phenomena occurring during the anodize step and allows anodizers to identify “chemically obvious” problems and solutions, while awareness of progressively more advanced concepts helps round out the picture of why things happen the way they do in anodizing.  For non-chemists, elementary concepts such as ions, equilibrium, oxidation, and standard reduction potential are introduced.  After, dependent and more advanced concepts such as speciation and ion mobility are discussed.  Throughout, the concepts are applied to specific examples and linked to known phenomena such as sulfite incorporation into the anodic oxide and the effects of dissolved aluminum on the conductivity of the bath.

Dye for Design: Optimizing the Anodizing Process for Light Colors

Jacqueline Cook, Reliant Aluminum Products

Running colored dyes on the anodizing line can be a frustrating endeavor. A myriad of factors such as oxide thickness, dye time, concentration, and temperature –among others—all have varying effects on the final color. In this presentation we will explore how these different factors can be best optimized to achieve not only our target colors but consistency over time in an ever-evolving bath. 

Wastewater System Sizing: How to Qualify the Size and Performance of Your System

Steven Buday, Haviland Products Company

Wastewater generated from anodizing and its associated pretreatment processes presents unique treatment challenges due to its complex chemistry and varying contaminant loading. Properly sizing wastewater treatment equipment is critical to achieving reliable performance, meeting increasingly stringent discharge requirements, and avoiding unnecessary capital and operating costs.This presentation will examine the key factors that influence equipment sizing for anodizing wastewater treatment systems, including flow variability, contaminant loading, process chemistry, and operational objectives. Attendees will learn practical approaches to gauge treatment equipment sizing to improve system reliability, optimize performance, and ensure regulatory compliance. The session will also highlight strategies for wastewater treatment to compensate for equipment that falls outside of operational design.