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+-- Thread: Bottle caps (/showthread.php?tid=7347415)
Bottle caps - dartman1965 - 03-30-2019
I have seen a few videos on using plastic bottle caps as a turning medium.Has anyone here tried this and if so may I ask a few questions?
RE: Bottle caps - Arlin Eastman - 03-31-2019
Peter Brown who used to be here did several YouTube vids on doing something like this and many others as well. Look him up.
RE: Bottle caps - dartman1965 - 03-31-2019
Thanks Arlin,I will do that....
RE: Bottle caps - iclark - 04-02-2019
Old-school descriptions of plastics puts them into either thermosetting or thermoplastic.
Thermosetting plastics like bakelite and casting resin do not melt or thermally reshape when you heat them. Typically, they char or burn if you get them hot enough to try.
Thermoplastic plastics can be reshaped with heat after they set.
Many bottle caps and bottles are made out of varieties of polyethylene (many with dies added).
As long as the bottle caps or bottles that you are using are all polyethylene, you can recycle them into turning blanks by putting them into the oven in a mold and melting them so that they fuse together. Getting the color pattern you want takes trial and error. In order to minimize bubbles and get the thickest casting per run, it helps if you break the caps and bottles down into chunks first.
Do not try to hurry things along by turning up the oven temperature above the recommended temps. Preheating the oven will help. So will putting a large cookie sheet on a lower shelf in the oven to avoid radiative hot spots in your melting pot/mold.