Letter 23827

Making aluminum reflectors for lightning industry  

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How to obtain a mirror bright finish on aluminum reflector made from 99.9 percent pure aluminum for lighting industry. Which is latest technology to be used?

yogesh panchal
- mumbai, maharastra, India

Current wide practice in the industry is to use extremely smooth plastic base then coat with vacuum metallized Al coating. This method eliminates need for polishing Al base if that is what you are trying to do. The reflectivity on plastic base exceeds 95%.

Mandar Sunthankar
- Fort Collins, CO

Hi, Yogesh. I can't fully agree with Mandar on this one. While his approach may be fine, I think the more common one is to chemically polish (bright dip) the aluminum with nitric-phosphoric acid after mechanically polishing the reflector, and then anodize it. I have seen this done on countless thousands of reflectors. Alternating, the reflectors can be electropolished. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, New Jersey

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