 Welcome to a new Fresh Plastic video! So we show you many videos with techniques on how to make products But one crucial part is also how to finish it because sometimes they come out of the mold pretty rough or Sometimes stuff just doesn't go exactly the way how you want it But there are some cool good techniques that help you to get the most out of each product And I'll show you how to finish them up using some stamps to mark each product to show which type of plastic It is so overall the principle is to smoother your mold to smoother the output So for instance here we have a CNC milled mold from aluminum that produces an iPhone case and This one is super finished and super smooth So also is the output product that you make is going to be super finished You don't really have to do anything with this one It comes out of the mold and it's done which is nice However, molds like that are also often very expensive and difficult to make So if you weld your own mold like this bowl You need to make sure that the more you polish it and the cleaner you make it the cleaner the output is gonna be So it always pays off to put some extra effort in your mold because every product you're gonna make with it Comes out better, which means less work in the end to finish it up Now having super clean and polished molds also helps to prevent plastic from sticking to it Because the smoother it is the less surface to stick However, if you do occur this problem, you can get mold releases. They come in many different shapes and sizes I would suggest to look locally what's available and test them out But this could definitely help as well to prevent plastic from sticking to your mold All right, so if you start to finish your plastic product, there are basically two different types One are the hard ones like polystyrene, PET, ABS Like this CD cover and if you bend it It breaks or you have the softer plastics, which are PP, HDPE, LDPE They are more flexible and tend to bend if you squeeze them So for instance here, we have two exact same bowls One is made from the flexible flower pots and one from the hard CD cases And they look pretty similar when it comes to shape and size However, if you hold them, you really feel a difference and also sound-wise This one feels way softer and this one has a Much harder sound The main difference when finishing these products is that the flexible one is softer and more difficult To really finish polish and sand and the hard one is really nice to Sand it and polish it later So for instance, a few examples, we have three different blocks This one is from ABS, which is hard This one is from polystyrene and this one is from polypropylene, which is soft And they all have the exact same sanding and finishing technique But as you can see, the polystyrene is super shiny and has these super clean edges Same goes for the ABS It really has this polishing finish to it Whereas the polypropylene is way softer and way more matte No matter how much you polish them, it just doesn't get as shiny And it's also way softer So if you put your nails in it, you instantly see the scratches So if you make plastic products from the soft category It really pays off to make a proper mold and that you have to finish as little as possible on it But if you do need to make some edits to it, I would highly recommend to get a super basic knife So let's say you have a bowl with a little bit of a rough edge around here If you sand it, it doesn't really work because it's too soft But with a little knife, you can really scrape the edges super clean and smooth again Because the knife creates some frictions, which heats it up a little bit And this makes it super smooth And it's a super basic technique, but very effective to really get rid of these rough edges And another technique for surfaces is to use this little knife It's basically the same thing, but if you have a surface like this one Which is a bit rougher and has some fibers here and there You can really scrape it like this And then it becomes really smooth like you can see here And one other technique you can use if your surface has this little Foily plastic fibers is to use a heat gun Now this works pretty good to get rid of it But do watch out because it can also influence the rest of your surface and adds a little texture to it But overall the soft plastics you would never get them as shiny as the hard ones All right, so finishing up the hard plastics This one you can really just sand by hand or with a machine starting up from grain 120 up to 1500 You just sand them step by step and in the end you polish them And they come super smooth and have this really Polished shiny surface which also makes the colors pop way more There are different materials to polish out there And we use toothpaste which works surprisingly good However, this is white and if you make something dark or with a color you can have these little white dots in it So we like it if it's you don't see the polishing paste So you also have this transparent one which are used in the car industry They also give a nice shiny result So for instance here is one rock we made and we really polished it and now it's super shiny It's made from cd cases Or this big piece of ivory So as you can see it really extruded very roughly on this side and slowly sanded and polished and on this side It's super smooth And that's something you wouldn't be able to achieve with the soft plastics So it's a very labor-intense process It's a very crafty way of working with plastic, but it does give some nice results But as a production technique I would say it's going to take you a while to really make it this smooth every time So once you made your object whether it's hard or soft plastic you need to mark it To show which type of plastic is and this is important because If future generations wants to recycle it again, they can see which type of plastic it is so they know how to treat it There are several ways to stamp your plastic You could hammer it in you could use a dremel tool to engrave it Or even a paper clip like these guys in the forums did Now we've been really cracking our head in finding a way how the entire precious plastic community Can mark their products easily and affordable In a consistent method and we found a pretty solid way So we made our own little metal precious plastic coins each coin has a type of plastic on it So for instance here we have a polypropylene you heat up these coins And then you mark and stamp it inside the plastic product We like to use soldering iron to heat it up You just plug it in the electricity and put your coin on then you wait for about seven minutes It depends on which type of plastic which melting temperature it is But overall it shouldn't take too long So once the coin is hot enough, we're going to take it off and we're going to put it on our plastic product And press it in a little bit so all the plastic flows and melts And then you just cool it down If you're in a hurry you could also put it in a bucket of water We are aware the method of working with precious plastic is pretty labor-intense You need to collect shred melt and stamp your products It's a lot of work, but that's what we do to recycle plastic So we see this little logo not just as a type of plastic on there But really as a precious plastic trademark that it shows that you've taken all the steps to make these products Which makes it way more valuable Now we started with five different types of plastic which are mostly used by the community And you can buy these coins in our online bazaar if you need more or different types Let us know if a lot of people one time we will make them as well But for now we're going to start out with these five All right, so that was our video on how to finish your plastic products I hope it was all clear and that is useful for you and your plastic workspace to really increase the quality level of your products Thanks again for watching if you have a question feel free to post the topic in our forums and see you again in the next video