If there's one thing that really grinds my gears about computer components, it
is their apparent obsession that their creators have with putting glossy
plastic on all the places it really should not be. I don't know if how we
still have this problem. I'll admit it hasn't really been as bad lately, but it
does still happen. Anyways, in a fit of rage after marking up yet another glossy
plastic surface, I ran to the store and assembled the tools I thought I may need
to transform glossy plastic surface into a beautiful brushed finish.
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make this transformation from a piece of glossy plastic to a nice brushed finish?
I chose to tackle this in the best way I know how. Through scientific testing, I
assembled the necessary tools, sandpaper in 320, 400, 800, and 1,000 grit. I
ideally wanted to feature 600 grit as well, but I wasn't able to source any
locally. I also grabbed uh grade zero and grade three steel wool and three
rough 3M stripping pads, the kind you'd use to scrub hard to clean things or
remove some type of thing off of a surface. They were labeled as heavy
contour surface stripping and final. Most of these were used individually,
but the sandpaper will be used in succession, starting at 320 grit and
ending at 1,000. Once I had these tools at my side, I found some surfaces with a
glossy finish. Namely, an original Nintendo Wii, the back of an ASUS
monitor, and an old Seagate Goflex satellite. But Luke, you may be saying,
why ruin a perfectly good Wii monitor and Goflex drive for the sake of your
silly experiment? Of course, I would not be doing this with my own Wii. And to do
this test, the Wii that we're using is actually Linus'. You may have noticed
its appearance to be fairly nasty with a bunch of marks and old sticky areas all
over it. Only a man with true disregard for his gaming systems would leave them
in this state. Plus, he's out of the country right now, so he probably won't
mind anyways. Uh, let's see. Hey, Lionus, do you mind if we use your Wii
to test like scratching glossy plastic off things?
No answer means no problem. When it comes to the monitor, well, we decided
to use this monitor because the glossy portion is actually on the back as well,
meaning that we could experiment with it. And if it came out looking
absolutely terrible, I could just use it normally and never have to see my
massive failure ever again. And if it worked well, I could transition over to
the front of the monitor and change that side over to a brush plastic finish as
well with the material that I found to leave the most appealing faux brush
plastic finish. And the Seagate drive, well, I'm sure it was beautiful at one
time, but nowadays it is pretty faded, a bit scratched, and covered in
fingerprints. This device will be the last one that I use, and I'll use my
favorite method on it to see what it can accomplish on something like this. So,
with testing surfaces in place, I tape taped off sections for each material so
that I could compare the efficiency of each in a well organized fashion. This
may result in a weird look once I pull the tape off and will ultimately kind of
ruin the aesthetic of these devices, at least at first, but this is a video for
you guys, and I'm sure Lionus won't mind. So, here we go. I started with the
Wii. I portioned off one side of it for the three levels of 3M pad, and the
other side for the two varieties of steel wool as well as the sandpaper
combination. To my eye, it seems like the zerograde steel wool provided the
best finish on the white surface of the Wii, but it was actually fairly hard to
tell as the white brushed plastic doesn't really have the same shine we're
accustomed to seeing on black brush plastic. In the end, uh they all seemed
pretty similar to be completely honest on white brush plastic. So, I think
you'd be pretty happy with any of these solutions. My favorite part of this
procedure on the Wii was less giving it a brushed look and more just removing
the shine and fingerprint potential. The monitor was where we separated the men
from the boys, so to speak. The 3M contour stripping pad provided what I
think was actually a pretty amazing brush look finish for a DIY solution
like this. If I hadn't been doing this for the test, I may have actually been
convinced that it came brushed from the factory without looking all that
closely. The runner up was actually a tie between the grade zero steel wool
and the 3M final pad, but it must be noted that it was much more difficult to
get a consistent finish with the steel wool as the material was much more
malleable in hand. And the pads provided
a nice solid base to push against and seem to provide the most even finish
overall without the need to do as many touch-ups, which can result in it
looking not as nice as more often than not touch-up require the need of even
more touch-ups. Since the contour surface stripping pad performed the best
on the monitor, I decided to use that for the Seagate drive as well. It
actually provided a pretty amazing result to be honest and I think that the
new finish looks pretty darn sharp compared to the old glossy version. I do
think it was a little harder than it could have been due to the slowly
stripping away the from the white logo, but in the end it was totally worth it.
At first I tried covering that logo with tape to protect it, but in the end this
just looked kind of weird and it wasn't worth it. So I took it off and made it
look the same as the rest. So overall I think this experiment was a success.
While it isn't perfect, I was actually able to replicate the look of brush
plastic fairly well, especially with these 3M pads. I would definitely
recommend giving these a shot if you're planning on running this experiment for
yourself or if you plan on converting some of your glossy plastic to a brush
finish on your own. Speaking of improving things, I'm excited to
announce a drop on mass drop today that you will certainly not see very often.
They're providing a build your own battle station setup featuring three LG
24 MC57HQ-P monitors, which are 1080p IPS displays,
and the Ergotech Freedom ARM, a triple monitor stand that has Murka written all
over it. Get it? Cuz uh Freedom or whatever. Anyways, if you want to beef
up your display and set up a triple monitor battle station, this is going to
be one of the more affordable ways to do so, thanks to Massdrop's group by model.
You can check out this drop and many others in the link in the description,
drawlinisttips. That link doesn't really give us a
kickback or anything, but it does let them know that we sent you, which lets
them see how awesome the LT community is and makes the decision to keep
supporting the channel a whole lot easier. You think you ever plan on
converting glossy plastic to a brush finished, or have you done so in the
past? Have you tried varnish? Uh, let me know in the comments down below or over
on the forum. While you're here, like, dislike, favorite, share, subscribe,
follow, comment. Go in the comment
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kind of funny stuff on it. Over on the forum, you can click on the support us
link to do stuff like change your Amazon affiliates. Uh, install the Linus Tech
Tips notifier so that they can auto change your Amazon affiliate codes for
you. Uh, become a contributor to the forum because that helps us out a lot
and you get a cool little badge thing. Uh yeah, there's a bunch of different
ways to help out. Anyways guys, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.