Revitalizing 40 year old plastic lenses, plan B.

Question

Revitalizing 40 year old plastic lenses, plan B.

Tmoose (Mechanical)

(OP)

31 Oct 18 21:23

If there is no way to roll back time and make old brittle plastic tail light lenses youthful and supple, Step 2 would be use the old lenses to make molds to cast new ones.

What would be a good casting plastic that could be made red with decent transparency/translucency ?

thanks,

Dan T

btrueblood (Mechanical) · Answer 1 · 2018-11-01 15:12:29

Urethanes, maybe not the best stuff but pourable and readily available.

Sheet acrylic and polycarbonate can be readily thermoformed with low-cost molds.

dgallup (Automotive) · Answer 2 · 2018-11-01 15:13:21

Might be cheaper & easier to 3D print them but the quality and material properties are all over the place. Are you sure you can't just buy new old stock?

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

epoxybot (Structural) · Answer 3 · 2018-11-01 16:27:18

I have no idea where you are but where I live, we have Tap Plastics Linkand they sell clear casting resins & mold forming products. Clear Methyl methacrylate (Plexiglass Resin) and Polyester. It is also possible that a good boat supply house has some good candidate materials for this project.

3DDave (Aerospace) · Answer 4 · 2018-11-01 21:56:22

Smooth On has a good selection. https://www.smooth-on.com/spotlight/red-buses-glac...

Tmoose (Mechanical) · Answer 5 · 2018-11-02 21:04:11

RE: Revitalizing 40 year old plastic lenses, plan B.

Tmoose (Mechanical)

(OP)

2 Nov 18 21:04

thanks All,

Dan T in Massachusetts

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Revitalizing 40 year old plastic lenses, plan B.