Quote from: Zeal on Thu, 19 June 2014, 15:39:27 Why doesn't someone bring some stems into a lab and analyze it? (No clue what the cost of doing that is )



I've looked into it getting lab work done. The issue is that there are *tons* of formulations of different plastics, many of which could be proprietary blends or materials.



I think getting lab work done on that is around $100-200. I did a similar test in college with a metal sample. I'm not sure if plastics will cost more or less.



Edit: UL94HB is a Underwriter's Labratory test against flammability. Matweb spit out some results for UL94HB but the problem is a test doesn't narrow down the material field.



one problem with polymers (and materials in general) is that there's so much there beyond just the composition. With metal, you can get a lot of what you need from spectroscopy and then following up with failure test and examining the break area with a SEM. If you want to go all-out, you can do some other things too.For polymers, if you see what elements its made from, you'll only get a small part of the story, from what I was able to determine, it's a lot harder to get degree of polymerization / crosslinking / etc. info out of it, especially for blends and composites.For example: there's tons of PC + ABS blends out there. Beyond the actual plastic composition, there's the polymerization of each, the fiber length / width, amount of it in the polymer matrix, even the orientation of the strands makes a huge difference. I'm pretty sure a lot of this is harder to get out of it, and gold / platinum coating it for expensive microscopy I don't think will tell you much.I'll ask Dad about it at dinner: he specializes in polymers. I just know a little about nanoscale and powder characterization techniques. Polymers is a weak point of mine sadly