Plastic Oval Flora

HDPE and ABS Fly Pressing

Figure 1 - Mbeje A. (2020). Oval Flora. Gilding Metal (Mould), ABS Plastic (left-side) and HDPE (right-side).

This is my third experimentation on fly pressing, but what I have noticed so far ABS Plastic has good characteristics on fly pressing, a smooth shiny surface as seen in figure 1 on the right side, and it's lighter than HDPE plastic. ABS plastic cools off very fast from the fly pressed mould and HDPE plastic takes time to cool off and also leaves dark lays inside the mould.

Figure 2 - Mbeje A. (2020). Oval Flora, ABS Plastic (right-side) and HDPE (left-side).

I tried another different technique of mixing ABS and HDPE plastic together to see if these two pieces of plastic will bond together when melted and fly pressed. it didn't happen due to the temperature heat of two plastics, HDPE melt easily and ABS plastic takes time for it to melt,  Therefore it's not possible to mix the two resin plastics together for fly pressing, due to the melting temperature resin of these two plastics as seen in figure 2.

I have learned a lot from this experimentation about plastics. I was able to learn different techniques of approaching this experiment, even if it was difficult for me at first but I was having an understanding of what plastic does when you fly press and also when you are compressing plastic to form a shape, what happens? Those were the things that I wanted to know from this experiment.