Idea for self-anodizing the Framework 13 Pro shell for custom colors

I see the framework 13 pro and I do plan on buying it. Although I do like how the current offerings of the Graphite and Grey, I do have a wish for anodizing it myself for more vibrancy and customization of design. But before i go off in June doing something stupid, I thought I’d run my plan by the community first.

From this youtube video found from this topic about anodizing (that later transitioned to coloring an f16 black), I see that there are magnets and various bits of stuff glued to the aluminum shells.

I therefore propose this:

I’ll buy a new shell with the bare grey color, strip away everything, KOH bath to remove the existing anodization, and then the usual acid → dye → cold seal using a NiF₂ solution at like 30°C to seal, and then use epoxy to get everything back in place.

Please someone correct me about anything so I don’t end up doing something dumb.

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You may want to research fluorides, my conclusion was that they are pretty toxic – no immediate skin burns but tissue necrosis in a few hours. Iirc there are alternative ways to seal that are less dangerous.

Well I’m sure that there’s other solutions, but last I checked they usually involve high heat or boiling water, which kills magnets (I suck at research so there might actually be a way to do this without boiling water or caustic solutions but still).

Do you not plan to remove the magnets? Sealing them in some way instead, to protect from the striping and anodizing chemicals?

~edit~
A quick google gave a result saying that some nickel platings can be resistant to potassium hydroxide. nickel-guide.microncoatings.it/en/chemical-resistance. No idea about the anodizing step.

Yeah that was kinda my idea to just seal up the magnets in the first place since I didn’t want to go through the headache of undoing and redoing the epoxy.

And thanks for the link about the KOH resistance stuff! Not sure if framework even uses nickel-sealed anodizations (boiling in straight water seems pretty cheap and efficient), but I think I’ll just figure something out if I can’t get the existing anodizations off.

Ah, I see. Going by a quick search, looks like sodium silicate is low-temp with medium-quality results, and there are also commercial mixes like SurTec 650.