Quote:
Originally Posted by mbaddah
Hi Mark,
After my experience using Silver coatings with Wayne I would highly advise against it. It was tempting at the time to go for the 99% reflectivity, but after it failed on me on the second outing I had (coating literally came off in pieces) I would stick with Aluminium. I would hate to hear of others having the same experience I had then forking out for the expensive repair.
Just my 2c.
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All those problens are now sorted out and silver mirrors are passing the tape `adhesion' test with flying colours. The enhanced silver coating is very simple - silver then a layer of Quartz ( very hard ) then a single layer of another material deposited by Ion deposition. You unfortunately got the first coating that had apparently not been tape tested ( which would have shown there was a fault . and the fault in the process has since been corrected.
I now have 2 12" mirrors in service with both plain Quartz and enhanced silver and i will be seeing how they compare in terms of longevity. Just passing on what I know about all this. it was great of Peter of SDM to send your faulty mirror immediately to another coater to get you up and running again and as far as I know you didn't personally suffer other than having your scope out of action for a while.