How to return transparency to plastic manually

Transparent plastic, due to its low hardness, gets scratched and rubbed over time, becoming dull and completely opaque. As a result, the product made from it becomes unusable. To restore its transparency, you need to polish it. This can even be done manually without a special tool. By polishing you can restore safety glasses, car headlights, radio panels, etc.

What you will need:

sandpaper P2000;
water;
abrasive polishing paste;
latex gloves.

Plastic polishing process

The main problem when polishing is caused by deep scratches. As long as they remain, it will not be possible to return the product to its original appearance. To remove them, use P2000 sandpaper. Sanding is done only when wet. You need to add water to the surface and sand it.

Periodically it is necessary to wash off the sawdust between the sandpaper grains. If there are very deep scratches, they can be pre-rubbed with coarser sandpaper with P1000 grit. The task is to sand down a thin layer of plastic to the level of the bottom of the scratch so that the plane becomes smooth without indentations.

After sanding, the scratches will go away, but the matte finish will remain. You can remove it with a finer abrasive. It uses abrasive polishing paste. You can buy it at an auto enamel store. The paste is applied in a small amount and rubbed.

Polishing with paste is performed with periodic wetting. It is best to initially apply it to a wet surface. Polishing is performed using circular movements of gloved fingers. As the paste dries, you need to moisten it. This is convenient to do with a spray bottle or pipette. If you add water little by little, the paste will not wash off and only a couple of drops will be used. When polishing, you can evaluate transparency using light, or by catching side reflections.

While the surface is wet, it appears perfectly transparent. Therefore, it is possible to see the real result of polishing only if you wash off the paste and dry the plastic. To avoid waiting for a long time, you can blow it with a hair dryer.

The duration of polishing with paste depends on its quality. A really good abrasive is not cheap, so it makes sense to buy a budget one and use it in combination with polished attachments on an angle grinder, drill or drill. This will compensate for the low polishing speed. However, using the machine method, you need to act more carefully so that the paste does not dry out and the surface does not heat up as a result.