Oops! The anatomy of an OP reflector...

So I was polishing up some E0 reflectors and I decided to see if my new torch could be improved with a little polish. So I proceded to disassemble it an began polishing with some aluminum/mag polish. Boy what a mistake! It was nice enough looking before but I couldn't leave well enough alone.

BEFORE:


And this is what it looks like when you polish away the shiny reflector coating, which doesn't take very long.


I thought to mysef what have I done? This is supposed to be a solid aluminum reflector, not some cheezy plastic POS. Then I realized that the easiest way to make an OP reflector out of aluminum wouldn't be to machine it. It would be some sort of textured coating.

Keeping that in mind I looked at it again. Now, it looked like some sort of rough textured anodization. Ironically, it's orange:thinking:. I figured if I could remove this layer I could get down to the aluminum again, polish it and have a nice smooth reflector. Not to mention pretend that I did it on purpose, LOL.

So try as I might I couldn't get it off with polish, acetone, or aircraft paint stripper. I don't have any lye around the house so I had to fabricate some mini wet sanding paper and remove the coating manually.

Mini wet sanding paper:


And what 30 minutes of my life looks like:


Looks pretty good,eh?:twothumbs
A little polish:


And the after picture:


So, long story short, If you have better things to do with about 30 or so minutes of your life ~DO NOT POLISH YOUR REFLECTOR!!

But I'm still pretty new here and you guys probably aready knew this.

Thanks for reading.

heh...
noobie mistake
numerous threads about not physically touching a reflector with anything abrasive

Yeah, the most common method for a OP finish involves a metal vapor deposit method. Great job on the re-polish though.

Excellent repolish. And really, hile 30 minutes of most anyone's time is valuable, many would otherwise be spending that 30 minutes "playing" with their light anyhow, so you actually got something done!

Nice Job.

How's the beam with the re-polished reflector?

That's kinda cool how you were able to fix it up!

LOL good post warlord. I'm sure it will help others before they attempt that! and good polish job there
(you must have been a shoe finisher in a past life), how does it compare for you, before and after?

Wow! Awesome job on the refinishing job, you're pretty crafty! If that was me, I'd be stuck with my new "mule mod." :thinking:

warlord when I read the first paragraph I thought my side would bust. you gave me my laugh for the day. Nice post.

Thanks.

Bill

Even thou it seems to be polished now, it's gone, won't be nearly as reflective as before.

Haha, yeah I'm very experienced in polishing in this life. There's plenty of room for improvement but if you've read my post on this light you'll see I'm not terribly impressed. I think the amount of time I've spent on it is fine for now. I'll probably work on it more when I swap out the driver. As for the beam I wish I had a before and after. It seems to throw much better but, a regular pocket rocket.

I'm sure that the 92% reflectance of Al is enough for me. That is why they use it to make reflectors and mirrors for telescopes. Anyway, I doubt that they had this thing coated with anything better, which would be what...silver?!? LOL!

I guess someone just likes to be a little black raincloud.

Lol, you just had to edit that in when you see me reply, because you lost an argument eh?

oh the irony...

Crenshaw

jzmtl said:

Lol, you just had to edit that in when you see me reply, because you lost an argument eh?

Click to expand...

He's right. Properly polished, it could very well be MORE efficient now than before his little "accident" which caused the impromptu mod. Polished aluminum is highly reflective.

But the problem is Al oxidizes and leaves a not very reflective coating.

Either way, lessoned learned.

jzmtl said:

Lol, you just had to edit that in when you see me reply, because you lost an argument eh?

Click to expand...

No, I just corrected my grammar in that post.

Why are you admittedly trying to start an argument? That is called Baiting and it's against the rules...Plese stop.

edit: I'd also like to point out that this isn't the first time you've done this.

Cool.... uh "mod". Yeah I meant to do it that way!!

Is this a worth while method to improve the efficiency of any coated reflector? OP or not?

FWIW.. I'm handy with wet-sanding, dremel and polishing compounds, or is there more to it than that?

polish it really well, then put a nice thin layer of this on the reflector, and let it dry a couple mins, and buff it up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Wax

I use it on my knives, outer flashlight bodies, and its wonderful stuff. It will stop any oxidation of your aluminium if you coat the whole thing with a layer of it.

kramer5150 said:

Cool.... uh "mod". Yeah I meant to do it that way!!

Is this a worth while method to improve the efficiency of any coated reflector? OP or not?

FWIW.. I'm handy with wet-sanding, dremel and polishing compounds, or is there more to it than that?

Click to expand...

I have a dremel but I hand sanded it so that I wouldn't accidently change the shape of the reflector. Technically it should be more reflective than a coated reflector but as stated before there's the whole issue of oxidation. I am using a special polish that is supposed to retard oxidation but It's likely that the surface will have to be repolished occasionally. We'll see.

For that reason I wouldn't suggest doing this...even if you're bored, LOL.

techwg said:

polish it really well, then put a nice thin layer of this on the reflector, and let it dry a couple mins, and buff it up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Wax

I use it on my knives, outer flashlight bodies, and its wonderful stuff. It will stop any oxidation of your aluminium if you coat the whole thing with a layer of it.

Click to expand...

But what happens when it gets exposed to the heat from an LED?

warlord said:

But what happens when it gets exposed to the heat from an LED?

Click to expand...

LED's don't radiate heat out the front like incan's. The body itself should soak up most of the heat produced from the circuitry.