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Anodizing Dye Color Naming conventions? 4A, AEN, 3GL

March 6, 2020

Q. Hello, Just a hobbyist learning:

I wondered if anyone might be able to shed some light on the Anodizing Dye color naming conventions seen out there.

I'm seeing appended codes like: 4A, AEN, 3GL at the end of Dye names, and don't know what those mean. They seem to sometimes be common across manufacturers, which tends to imply a deeper mapping to some kind of color specification or historical meaning.

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Also, is there a preferred approach to color mixing using the commonly available base color anodizing dyes to get to specific desired hue/shade?

It seems in my limited testing (Type II on 6061), it has not been as simple as mixing to ratios one would use in the paint or computer worlds, as the dyes tend to uptake at different rates.

Also it's been pretty hard (for me, anyway) to tell how a specific mixture will turn out, without actually anodizing a part. Are there methods to grade color without full anodize cycle?


Ideally, would love to be able to start with a CMYK or RGB value, then calculate my way to an "in the ballpark" hue, then tune it to my alloy and surface prep in as few anodize iterations as possible

Grateful for anyone who might point me in the right direction!

Jeremy Witt
Hobbyist - Dallas, Texas USA