Subject:
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Re: Reasons for the color change
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 10 May 2004 19:06:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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1774 times
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In lugnet.general, Wesley Davis wrote:
> Not only would recycled plastic be presumably cheaper,
It would also be less expensive. Oh wait, that's probably what you meant by
"cheaper". Something I found out last year about recycling plastic is exactly
why the quality degrades so much each time it's recycled. Plastic is made of a
bunch of molecular chains that link together, which is where it gets its
strength. When you recycle plastic into an injection molding or extrusion
system, you have to grind it up. When you grind it up, you cut a lot of those
chains into smaler segments, so they have less length to tangle with each other
for strength (fiberglass is a lot stronger when you start with woven cloth
instead of blown fibers for this same reason). Unfortunately, this has an even
bigger impact on injection molded plastic, as the molecular chains don't flow as
well when they're really long, so they start out pretty short to begin with.
After they're recycled a few times, the plastic will get a lot more brittle
(have you noticed how often certain pieces split these days?) because the chains
barely have any length to grip each other with.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Reasons for the color change
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| (...) Have people seen those boards they make out of recycled plastic for benches and stuff? What color do they have, with all those colors mixed in? A sort of bluish grey. It didn't occur to me at first how likely of an explanation this was. Not (...) (20 years ago, 10-May-04, to lugnet.general)
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