Plastic Types That Are Compatible With Polymer Clay
Video #765: And how to test for polymer compatibility when the plastics are not marked with any of the known recycling symbols.
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IN THIS POST: keyword - keyword - keyword (Topics marked with an asterick* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
When storing unbaked polymer clay, don’t just throw it into any old plastic container, because when you come back at a later date, the clay may no longer be usable.
Polymer clay is basically a plastic clay made of plasticizers, fillers, pigments, oils, binders and whatever else they put in there. When it is in it’s raw state, the plasticizers are ‘wet’ so to speak, and are available to leach out and react with whatever material they are in contact with. Some polymer clays react quite badly with some plastics, by eating into the surface and actually changing the properties of the clay.
What makes things complicated, is that there are many different types of plastics made with different materials, as well as many different formulations of polymer clay… each one reacting or not reacting in different ways.
In today’s video I talk about the different types of plastics, which ones are polymer clay safe, which ones are not, and what do when you don’t know what type of plastic you have.
In a nutshell:
The plastics with the following recycling numbers are SAFE:
#1 – PET or PETE Polyethylene Terephthalate
#2 – HDPE High Density Polyethylene
#4 – LDPE Low Density Polyethylene
#5 – PP Polypropylene
The plastics with the following recycling numbers are NOT SAFE:
#3 – PVC Poly Vinyl Chloride
#6 – PS and EPS Poly Styrene and Expanded Poly Styrene
And then there is #7 – Other… which includes a bunch of different plastics like Acrylics, Teflon, Nylon, Polycarbonate and others. This category is iffy due to the fact that some are safe, like acrylics, and others are not. So anything with a #7 symbol must be tested to be sure.
Watch the video, you’ll see what it looks like when a plastic is not polymer clay safe.
Transcript goes here...
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