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Making aluminum reflectors for lightning industry

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
2003

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, Colorado
2003

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 (alternately the reflectors can be electropolished), and then anodize it. I have seen this done on countless thousands of reflectors. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
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