Reproducibility of known Auto Paints

Step two for my research over the summer is reproducibility of known auto paints from a collision center. These are not actual auto paints samples from the manufacturer but paints used by the collision center to match the manufactured paint. Over the past semester, we had identified a specific Raman spectrum using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for a particular paint. My goal was to simply reproduce this spectrum. Reproducing something is often much harder then it sounds unfortunately. After much trial and error, I was able to reproduce the spectrum on multiple samples on different days. Success! I was also able to reproduce the spectrum of the other paints provided by the collision center. Through the reproduced spectra, I was also able to prove that the chromophore or pigment used by the specific collision center was the same for all the paints. Double-success! Step three is to obtain an identifiable spectrum from auto paints actually from the manufacturer.