polishing scratches in plastic?

James S

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I figure if there are people that can tell me if it's possible, they are here;)

2 full days of driving with my 2 year old daughter had prompted me to open my wallet for a "fun tv" system from BestBuy, as they were on sale. It includes a 5" flat screen monitor and a 12v DC video cassette player for the car. This amused her quite a bit on the way out, worked quite well.

When loading up the car for the trip back however, I sat her in her seat and as I was fishing for the straps she revealed that she had brought in a rock from the parking lot and to my horror made 3 hard swipes at the screen by way of telling me she wanted it turned on!

She left some pretty good scratches on the plastic screen. No damage other than that. I suppose that if I just packed it away for the next trip I wouldn't really care as it didn't bother her any. But I had wanted to play with the thing a bit myself and I know that it would drive me up the wall to look at that on a brand new screen.

Is there any way to polish plastic? Might those scratches be buffed out? Has anyone any experience or wisdom to offer on polishing or buffing compounds for such a project?

Obviously a massive change in light transmission around the scratches caused by poor buffing would end up being more distracting than the scratches, so I'm not planning to mess with it until I gather some more info.

It just occurs to me that it may be possible to take the whole thing apart and replace the plastic in front of the screen, unless it is part of the LCD display. I'll have to try that as well...

Thanks,
James
 

LED-FX

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Best plastic polish have come across is Novus:

http://www.noscratch.com/novus

Genuinely impressive product thats used for cleaning motorcycle fairing screens and pinball machines.

Comes in three grades 1 Fine, 2 Medium Fine and 3 Not so fine for scratch removal.

Its mainly inteneded for acrylics, so test on a small area first.

Adam
 

Albany Tom

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Hey, thanks for the info for me, too! I was going to suggest Novus, but didn't think it would work with deep scratches. I didn't know they made a #3! Very cool...

Now where to order small quantities of #3?
 

James S

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thats fantastic. If it can polish scratches off of a CD then it should be able to do a good job on the TV screen.

And perhaps I'll discover other annoyingly scratched plastic things around here that need polishing;)

I'll give them a call and order a kit tomorrow.

Thanks,
James
 

txwest

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I have the 1st 2 grades of Novus. No experience with #3. If that doesn't work, might try a local jewler. I saw one overseas take a realy deep scratch off a watch lens in about 10 secs. TX
 

LED-FX

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If its a really deep scratch,can use wet and dry paper at 1200 or 1500 grit,use it wet, very wet, and go with direction of scratch.

Following with the three stage Novus to polish it.

Jewellers use Jewellers Rouge, which is a very fine abrasive, bit of an overview:

http://www.reliabletechniques.fsnet.co.uk/otherpol.html

The idea is to start with the coarsest abrasive it takes to get flatness and then move through finer abrasives to get the polish.

Adam
 

logicnerd411

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On a slightly different note, my Sony Clie Palm PDA has a very small scratch on the Graffiti area and it's driving me nuts. You can't even see it unless you tilt the screen at an angle. Why is it bothering me? Everytime I write, I feel them. Would that Novus work, or will it completely destroy the screen? Thanks!
 

Quickbeam

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believe it or not, Brasso metal polish does a great job on plastic. So does toothpaste (not the gel type). Try in a small area first. Neither have ever let me down.
 

RY3

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Originally posted by Quickbeam:
believe it or not, Brasso metal polish does a great job on plastic. So does toothpaste (not the gel type). Try in a small area first. Neither have ever let me down.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I knew people use toothpaste on scratched CD but didn't know about Brasso.

I would thought metal polishing product contains chemical that might harmful to plastic
confused.gif
.
 

James S

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Originally posted by logicnerd411:
On a slightly different note, my Sony Clie Palm PDA has a very small scratch on the Graffiti area and it's driving me nuts. You can't even see it unless you tilt the screen at an angle. Why is it bothering me? Everytime I write, I feel them. Would that Novus work, or will it completely destroy the screen? Thanks!
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I would be careful about using it on a touch screen like that. I have no idea how the mechanism works, but I would be concerned that however it works would be etched on the front of the screen. You wouldn't want to polish it off! However, if the scratch itself didn't do any damage then perhaps it works some totally different way? Sorry, not too much useful info, but I would try to find out specifically about how others have treated similar problems. I know those damn screens scratch fairly easily.

Thanks,
James
 

x-ray

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Originally posted by logicnerd411:
On a slightly different note, my Sony Clie Palm PDA has a very small scratch on the Graffiti area and it's driving me nuts. You can't even see it unless you tilt the screen at an angle. Why is it bothering me? Everytime I write, I feel them. Would that Novus work, or will it completely destroy the screen? Thanks!
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Have you thought of using WriteRight, most folks here use it to improve the beam quality of flashlights but it is actually designed to protect PDA screens.

Although it won't get rid of any scratches you already have, it will at least cover them so you can no longer feel them.

ofel1154.jpg


Look here for a review.
 

Albany Tom

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Well, while we're on home care tips, toothpaste works well for polishing glass, and GREAT for polishing dingy or scratched stainless steel. Use as a paste, light pressure, clean cloth, clean surface first.
 

logicnerd411

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WriteRights are great, but somewhat expensive; 12 sheets for $20. It's a good investment to keep my screen scratch free, but still expensive.
 

Quickbeam

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Brasso worked great on my palm pilot screen with no ill effects. If you decide to try it, try not to get it under the edges of the case around the screen edges, it's a pain to remove the residue from such a tight spot. For polishing I used a damp clean cotton cloth wrapped around my finger - an old cotton t-shirt or something. It won't get rid of deep scratches, but they'll blend with the surrounding material much better to the point where you don't feel them with the stylus.

The cheap way to keep the screen scratch free is to cut out sheets of laser transparancy paper. Cut squares a little larger than the screen and slip it under the edges of the case around the screen. I've been doing this ever since I scratched the screen once and it works great.
 

Brotherscrim

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Originally posted by logicnerd411:
WriteRights are great, but somewhat expensive; 12 sheets for $20. It's a good investment to keep my screen scratch free, but still expensive.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">A cheaper solution my friend uses is to put a small piece of scotch tape on the graffiti area. Not the sort of thing to put on the whole screen, granted, but for the graffiti area it works fine.
 
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