Identifying material

[Evan]

While you're ID ing stuff Evan, what was the shaft you asked about?

I still don't know but I haven't run any more tests. I will when I need to use some of it. I sure wish I still knew somebody up at the mine in the assay dept. They just stick in a small bit of whatever and a few minutes later the mass spectrometer prints out a list of everything that is in it to better than 1%.

[Forrest Addy]

There are several basic plastic families that are relatitively easy to isentify. Then there are composition withing each family based on fillers, mixtures, blends with other families, and so on. It's all very complex if you absolutely positively have to determine what is what.

Generally a burn test of a small sample will get you in the ball park.

http://www.boedeker.com/burntest.htm