Glossy to Brushed Plastic DIY Experiment - Addressing Functionality & Appearance
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,485 words · ~7 min read
0:00
If there's one thing that really grinds my gears about computer components, it
0:03
is their apparent obsession that their creators have with putting glossy
0:07
plastic on all the places it really should not be. I don't know if how we
0:13
still have this problem. I'll admit it hasn't really been as bad lately, but it
0:17
does still happen. Anyways, in a fit of rage after marking up yet another glossy
0:22
plastic surface, I ran to the store and assembled the tools I thought I may need
0:26
to transform glossy plastic surface into a beautiful brushed finish.
0:41
Intel's new 750 series SSDs utilize the NVMe standard, providing speeds never
0:46
seen before on consumer storage drives. Click now to learn more. So, how do we
0:50
make this transformation from a piece of glossy plastic to a nice brushed finish?
0:55
I chose to tackle this in the best way I know how. Through scientific testing, I
0:59
assembled the necessary tools, sandpaper in 320, 400, 800, and 1,000 grit. I
1:06
ideally wanted to feature 600 grit as well, but I wasn't able to source any
1:10
locally. I also grabbed uh grade zero and grade three steel wool and three
1:15
rough 3M stripping pads, the kind you'd use to scrub hard to clean things or
1:19
remove some type of thing off of a surface. They were labeled as heavy
1:24
contour surface stripping and final. Most of these were used individually,
1:28
but the sandpaper will be used in succession, starting at 320 grit and
1:33
ending at 1,000. Once I had these tools at my side, I found some surfaces with a
1:38
glossy finish. Namely, an original Nintendo Wii, the back of an ASUS
1:43
monitor, and an old Seagate Goflex satellite. But Luke, you may be saying,
1:47
why ruin a perfectly good Wii monitor and Goflex drive for the sake of your
1:52
silly experiment? Of course, I would not be doing this with my own Wii. And to do
1:56
this test, the Wii that we're using is actually Linus'. You may have noticed
2:00
its appearance to be fairly nasty with a bunch of marks and old sticky areas all
2:04
over it. Only a man with true disregard for his gaming systems would leave them
2:08
in this state. Plus, he's out of the country right now, so he probably won't
2:12
mind anyways. Uh, let's see. Hey, Lionus, do you mind if we use your Wii
2:17
to test like scratching glossy plastic off things?
2:22
No answer means no problem. When it comes to the monitor, well, we decided
2:25
to use this monitor because the glossy portion is actually on the back as well,
2:30
meaning that we could experiment with it. And if it came out looking
2:33
absolutely terrible, I could just use it normally and never have to see my
2:38
massive failure ever again. And if it worked well, I could transition over to
2:42
the front of the monitor and change that side over to a brush plastic finish as
2:46
well with the material that I found to leave the most appealing faux brush
2:50
plastic finish. And the Seagate drive, well, I'm sure it was beautiful at one
2:55
time, but nowadays it is pretty faded, a bit scratched, and covered in
2:59
fingerprints. This device will be the last one that I use, and I'll use my
3:03
favorite method on it to see what it can accomplish on something like this. So,
3:07
with testing surfaces in place, I tape taped off sections for each material so
3:11
that I could compare the efficiency of each in a well organized fashion. This
3:16
may result in a weird look once I pull the tape off and will ultimately kind of
3:20
ruin the aesthetic of these devices, at least at first, but this is a video for
3:24
you guys, and I'm sure Lionus won't mind. So, here we go. I started with the
3:28
Wii. I portioned off one side of it for the three levels of 3M pad, and the
3:33
other side for the two varieties of steel wool as well as the sandpaper
3:37
combination. To my eye, it seems like the zerograde steel wool provided the
3:41
best finish on the white surface of the Wii, but it was actually fairly hard to
3:45
tell as the white brushed plastic doesn't really have the same shine we're
3:49
accustomed to seeing on black brush plastic. In the end, uh they all seemed
3:53
pretty similar to be completely honest on white brush plastic. So, I think
3:57
you'd be pretty happy with any of these solutions. My favorite part of this
4:00
procedure on the Wii was less giving it a brushed look and more just removing
4:05
the shine and fingerprint potential. The monitor was where we separated the men
4:10
from the boys, so to speak. The 3M contour stripping pad provided what I
4:14
think was actually a pretty amazing brush look finish for a DIY solution
4:18
like this. If I hadn't been doing this for the test, I may have actually been
4:24
convinced that it came brushed from the factory without looking all that
4:28
closely. The runner up was actually a tie between the grade zero steel wool
4:32
and the 3M final pad, but it must be noted that it was much more difficult to
4:37
get a consistent finish with the steel wool as the material was much more
4:40
malleable in hand. And the pads provided
4:43
a nice solid base to push against and seem to provide the most even finish
4:48
overall without the need to do as many touch-ups, which can result in it
4:52
looking not as nice as more often than not touch-up require the need of even
4:57
more touch-ups. Since the contour surface stripping pad performed the best
5:01
on the monitor, I decided to use that for the Seagate drive as well. It
5:05
actually provided a pretty amazing result to be honest and I think that the
5:09
new finish looks pretty darn sharp compared to the old glossy version. I do
5:14
think it was a little harder than it could have been due to the slowly
5:17
stripping away the from the white logo, but in the end it was totally worth it.
5:21
At first I tried covering that logo with tape to protect it, but in the end this
5:25
just looked kind of weird and it wasn't worth it. So I took it off and made it
5:29
look the same as the rest. So overall I think this experiment was a success.
5:33
While it isn't perfect, I was actually able to replicate the look of brush
5:37
plastic fairly well, especially with these 3M pads. I would definitely
5:42
recommend giving these a shot if you're planning on running this experiment for
5:45
yourself or if you plan on converting some of your glossy plastic to a brush
5:49
finish on your own. Speaking of improving things, I'm excited to
5:53
announce a drop on mass drop today that you will certainly not see very often.
5:58
They're providing a build your own battle station setup featuring three LG
6:02
24 MC57HQ-P monitors, which are 1080p IPS displays,
6:08
and the Ergotech Freedom ARM, a triple monitor stand that has Murka written all
6:12
over it. Get it? Cuz uh Freedom or whatever. Anyways, if you want to beef
6:17
up your display and set up a triple monitor battle station, this is going to
6:20
be one of the more affordable ways to do so, thanks to Massdrop's group by model.
6:25
You can check out this drop and many others in the link in the description,
6:28
drawlinisttips. That link doesn't really give us a
6:32
kickback or anything, but it does let them know that we sent you, which lets
6:36
them see how awesome the LT community is and makes the decision to keep
6:39
supporting the channel a whole lot easier. You think you ever plan on
6:43
converting glossy plastic to a brush finished, or have you done so in the
6:46
past? Have you tried varnish? Uh, let me know in the comments down below or over
6:50
on the forum. While you're here, like, dislike, favorite, share, subscribe,
6:54
follow, comment. Go in the comment
6:57
section down below to get a shirt that isn't from Twitch. Actually, it'll be from us, and we'll probably have some
7:02
kind of funny stuff on it. Over on the forum, you can click on the support us
7:06
link to do stuff like change your Amazon affiliates. Uh, install the Linus Tech
7:10
Tips notifier so that they can auto change your Amazon affiliate codes for
7:13
you. Uh, become a contributor to the forum because that helps us out a lot
7:16
and you get a cool little badge thing. Uh yeah, there's a bunch of different
7:20
ways to help out. Anyways guys, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.