The main purpose of hard anodizing aluminum is the production of anodic coatings with high technical properties. Evaluation of an anodic coating appears to be a straightforward procedure. However, situations do occur where national and international standards cannot give reliable recommendations for the testing and evaluation of anodic coatings. Furthermore, in daily laboratory activities, we are faced with test procedures that can not be adapted because the test method does not relate to evaluating the coatings technical properties. Along with the other aforementioned issues, there is a lack of standards stating requirements for all technical properties associated to a quality coating. This can lead to a coating being classified as high quality through speculation. Depending on test conditions, a coating can be classified as low quality when in fact it is a high quality coating. The objective of this paper is it to focus on the testing procedure and to show how difficult it can be as a testing laboratory to characterize technical quality of an anodic oxide coating.
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