aluminum plating?

[rx7rider]

has anybody electroplated a high purity aluminum layer onto 6061?

 

[kenvlach]

Possibly. Rather expensive process, requires anydrous salt solutions.

A commercial vendor:

http://www.alumiplate.com/

You can follow up these research reports:
'Progress in Surface Finishing with Lewis Acidic Room-Temperature Chloroaluminate Ionic Liquids,' T. Tsuda, C. Hussey (The University of Mississippi) and G. R. Stafford (NIST)
'Practical Aluminum Plating from a Room Temperature Ionic Liquid,' M. T. Carter and G. Bourgon (Eltron Research, Inc.)
'In Situ Stress Measurements During Aluminum Deposition from AlCl3-EtMeImCl,' G. R. Stafford (NIST), O. E. Kongstein (Norwegian University of Science and Technolog) and E. Sandnes (The Norwegian University of Science and Technology).

Aluminum is usually plated by Ion Vapor Deposition (IVD).

 

[swall]

I know you asked about electroplate, but you can also do IVD aluminum. We did some experimental work with the RSA high temperature aluminum alloys (8% Fe) and they did not anodize well. Made it a lot better by IVD coating with pure aluminum and then anodizing. Never made it into production, however due to various issues.

 

[israelkk]

Swall

As far as I know pure aluminum doesn't need anodizing for corrosion protection. This is the whole idea of alclad aluminum sheets for airplane wing and body sheets structures (such as 2024-T3 alclad sheets). Pure aluminum similar to 18-8 stainless steel forms a natural protective oxide.

 

[swall]

Israelkk--I fully agree with you. I raised the same question at the time. It was a paradigm thing--"we've always anodized, so we have to find a way to anodize this new material". I thought it was totally silly.