Finishing Introduction

We are especially flexible about finishing our products. Most components are made from machined/ brushed aluminium and that has become our trade mark. If you are careful about finger prints this is a durable and natural finish for indoors. Specify Brushed Aluminium.

Occasionally we are asked to make products out of brass or even bronze. These are specials and can be costly but also quite beautiful. Both brass and bronze weather dramatically outdoors but blend in nicely with their surroundings and don't disintegrate. Indoors they basically dull. For extreme exterior use we occasionally machine components out of stainless steel. 316 grade is required in marine environments. We also think of these as specials and they do tend to be expensive.

Our next most natural finish is anodised aluminium. This is pretty tough and suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. Soft anodising is readily available in black or silver. It's very easy to clean, tougher than most paint and it does not soften that nice sharp machined form like paint does. The exact finish is a bit variable though. Specialist anodisers offer a good range of colours and for a price we can finish aluminium components in various shades of bronze, rich red or shiny gold. Hard anodising is an industrial finish that I certainly like and that is very tough and long lasting. The exact shade of grey you end up with is a bit random though and components occasionally disintegrate.

Some of our smaller, especially exterior products are not suited to painting due to the intricate masking involved and potential compromise to the ingress protection. If you insist we paint our Tadpoles or Moles, expect a grumpy reaction and a wet paint to be used. Wet paints are not especially tough but are less thick than powder coating. Applied over anodising though, it's a reasonable way to get that lilac finish on your Mole. We can also buy wet paint in smaller quantities so these 16 Telemagenta pink MLXs need not cost a fortune. Powder coating is much tougher and for exterior use or for those museum track spots that are going to get piled on top of each other on the trolley, we'd recommend it. Some fancy finishes can fade outdoors but we are working on this. Where possible, for exterior fittings, we powder coat over natural anodising for maximum durability.