Stainless Steel Metal Spinning
Seamless 304/316L covers and housings with passivated finishes.
Read more →Spun Aluminum Reflectors & Lamp Housings
Optical surfaces with no spun-in marks, no tooling bill and a ten-day path from drawing to sample — for downlights, high bays, street lanterns and architectural fixtures.
Part of our metal spinning services: aluminium reflectors are one of several spun product families we run; every material, size and tolerance is listed there.
Optics first
The Surface Is the Product
A reflector is judged by one number your customer can measure: how much light leaves the fixture. Every step in spinning leaves a trace on the surface — roller feed marks, a polished-through edge, a mandrel score that telegraphs through the wall — and each one scatters light you paid for.
We spin reflectors on polished mandrels with controlled roller feed, then cut the optic profile on a CNC lathe rather than leaving it as-spun. That gives you a defined beam angle instead of an approximate one, and it lets us hold the profile tolerance that photometric simulation assumes.
- Reflector diameters from 20 mm to 1,500 mm, in single-piece or nested multi-cavity form
- Surface roughness Ra 0.2–0.4 µm after mirror polishing; Ra 0.8 µm as-spun for diffuse finishes
- Beam angles held to ±2° on CNC-turned profiles; tighter on request with a first-article photometric check
- Wall thickness 0.5–3 mm — thick enough to keep the shape, thin enough to keep the fixture light
- Faceted, stepped and multi-radius profiles all tooled in-house
Alloys
Choosing the Right Aluminum
| Alloy | Why we would pick it for a reflector |
|---|---|
| 1050 / 1100 | Pure aluminum, best reflectivity after polishing and anodizing. Soft, so best for small and medium reflectors with a protective housing. |
| 3003 | Slightly harder, still takes a good polish, more resistant to handling dents. A good default for downlights and track spots. |
| 5052 | Noticeably stronger and more corrosion-resistant. Use it for outdoor fixtures, street lanterns and large high-bay reflectors where the part must hold shape. |
| 5754 | Similar to 5052 with better anodizing response; chosen when the reflector is decorative anodized and visible. |
| 1070 / 1080 | Highest purity, highest cost — reserved for premium architectural and museum lighting. |
Tell us the finish before you fix the alloy. A 5052 reflector polished and anodized will not reach the same reflectivity as 1050, and swapping the alloy after the tooling is cut costs more than choosing correctly now.
Finishing
Polish, Anodize, or Both
Most lighting customers need one of three surface routes. We quote them separately so you can see what each one costs per part, and we keep samples of all three in Nanjing for comparison under your own light source.
| Finish | Typical use and what to expect |
|---|---|
| Mirror polish only | Indoor decorative and display fixtures. Highest reflectivity, but fingerprints and cleaning scratches show — handle with gloves and pack with film. |
| Mirror polish + clear anodizing | The usual choice for architectural and commercial luminaires. Protects the surface, keeps reflectivity high, adds a slight warm shift in colour. |
| Bright-dip anodizing | Uniform specular finish with fewer polishing steps, well suited to small reflectors produced in volume. |
| Diffuse / matte etch | Soft, glare-free output for office and hospitality lighting where a sharp hotspot is unacceptable. |
| Powder coat (white) | When the reflector body is also the visible housing; internal optical section still polished. |
Anodizing is done by two partners in Jiangsu who run dedicated lighting batches, so parts are not mixed with structural extrusions. Thickness is specified per drawing — typically 10–15 µm for clear anodizing — and checked with an eddy-current gauge on each lot.
Programme support
From Drawing to Photometric Sample
- Day 1–2 — drawing review, alloy and finish recommendation, DFM notes on radii and trimming allowance
- Day 3–7 — mandrel turned, first article spun and CNC-profiled
- Day 8–10 — polished and anodized sample shipped by express for your own photometric test
- Week 3 onward — production in weekly batches, with dimensional report and surface photos per lot
If you already have an IES file for a competitor reflector, send it with your drawing. Matching a known beam profile is faster than starting from a description, and it tells us immediately whether your target is achievable by spinning or needs a different process.
Freight damage is the most common complaint on thin reflectors. We nest parts in custom foam trays and ship in double-wall cartons; for large high-bay reflectors we quote a light plywood crate by default.
FAQ
Questions Buyers Ask Us
Can spun reflectors match a deep-drawn optic?
For most rotationally symmetric profiles, yes — and with lower tooling cost. Spinning struggles only when the profile has a sharp undercut or a step that cannot be released from the mandrel; in those cases we split the part into two spun pieces and join them, or recommend drawing instead.
What surface roughness can you actually achieve?
Ra 0.2–0.4 µm on polished aluminum is routine. Below Ra 0.2 µm the gain in reflectivity is small and the cost rises steeply, so we usually advise stopping there unless the fixture is a premium architectural product.
How much does the tooling cost?
A single mandrel for a reflector up to 400 mm is a modest one-off cost, typically recovered within the first few hundred pieces. Because there is no die set, changing the beam angle later means re-machining the mandrel, not rebuilding tooling.
Do you anodize in-house?
Polishing and spinning are in-house; anodizing is done by two dedicated partners within 40 km of our workshop. We control the specification, inspect thickness and colour, and take responsibility for the finished part either way.
What is the minimum order for a custom reflector?
One piece for a sample. Production typically starts at 100–200 pieces per size, since polishing and anodizing are batch processes and small lots carry a setup share.
Keep reading
Related Capabilities
More guides: Stainless Steel Metal Spinning · Spun Tank Heads & Dished Ends · Low-Volume Metal Spinning · Metal Spinning vs Stamping · CNC Machined Aluminium Enclosures · Spinning Design Guide · Spun Cones & Funnels · Spinning for Lighting · Roof Vent Caps · Spun Drain Pans & Ice Tubs
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