Babymog, that was a pretty good overview of reality. The colour temperature that is not all that important with cars is now being changed by propietory metal mixes. The driving force seems to be the requirement for accurate color temperatures for people that examine medical biopsies like patholigsts. Also operating room reflectors demand a certain range of colour temperature as well. There are many other examples.
We have been playing a little too.. We have been experimenting with rapid not common methods to deal with irregular reflector surfaces like pitting. It seems so far with some success. This had to be tackled to keep the cost to the the end user reasonable as well as make us look credible. Hours of hand labour or heat distortion of the reflector I considered not practical or desirable. We also thought the best way to retain the optic qualities of the reflector as much as possible was to get rid of some of the older aproaches.
As I previously mentioned this service is required for used reflectors as it is too easy to move into easier more lucrative applications. We want you to get something well done for your money. That is a simple tangiable goal I can relate to. I have always enjoyed value for the money expended.
The reflectivity index should be about 97 percent for the bright alloy mix versus 95 percent for bright silver. They are so close if done properly as to be considered the same for all practical purposes. Chromium or chrome are down at about 57 percent reflectivity. We can do the first two by vacuum metalization. We also have the equipment to do electroylitic deposition of silver as well. The enviroment issues with that are becoming a greater nightmare all the time though.
The last thing I want to deal with are the pleasant enviroment people that enforce and interfere with your processes. It seems if there is no propblem they will expend the effort to make one. I have no wish to participate in their make work projects for self justification of their existance. That was the primary reason we also settled on the vacmetalization. There is no polution control problem at all with that part of the process. Even they cannot find something that does not exist yet over time they may still give it the old college try.