Safety Glasses: Removing Light Scratches

by EurekaFactory

26K838

Intro: Safety Glasses: Removing Light Scratches

We have a robust collection of safety glasses, typically accrued from FIRST robotics events where we keep them available as spares for teams, or for guests interested in visiting the pits. Every year, after Regionals or ROBOTICON, our Tampa FIRST Showcase event, we find more orphaned safety glasses that we add to the collection.

Unfortunately, the glasses tend to end up tumbled into a box, in quite the same fashion that most teams keep their glasses collection. Safety glasses used by robotics teams have a hard life anyway, but tossing them in a box is a pretty poor way to store them, contributing to scratches, dirt and other problems.

So we decided to clean up our act, starting with cleaning the glasses and, as we'll show here, polishing out some of the lighter scratches were possible, to restore as many of the safety glasses as possible to a useful condition.

STEP 1: Materials

You'll need

  • Safety glasses
  • Toothpaste

STEP 2: Rinse and Apply Toothpaste

Rinse the glasses before you apply the toothpaste. Then apply just a small amount and rub well across the lenses, on both sides the glasses.

Better yet, completely wash and disinfect them first (See Disinfecting Safety Glasses) , which gives you a good opportunity to separate out the lightly scratched glasses from more heavily damaged ones.

STEP 3: Rinse and Dry

Rinse the toothpaste rub from the glasses, and dry with a soft clean cloth.

STEP 4: Enjoy the View

The toothpaste rub works best on light scratches but other than the most egregiously damaged glasses will help improve most moderately scuffed safety glasses to basic usability again.

But the best thing to do after you polish up your safety glasses, is not to put them back in a box again!

6 Comments

nstart47 3 years ago

I know this is a very late post, however a few summers ago (long before COVID, if you have a Costco or BJ's around, you order them in quantities of 200 for around the equivalent of 28 cents each. Better yet, if your Costco has a tire center, go get your tires rotated, small talk and ask someone NOT at the cashiers but working in the garages (after they get to know you). Than ask if you bought the 3-4 lunch there, would they mind giving you a box of those cheap safety classes? I spent under $30 buying them pizza and they gladly put several cases of those things. They go through several pairs a day. Brand new, still in the boxes. It just seems like such a waste of money and time (on buying the toothpaste and trying to remove most scratches).

I know headlights are different and they have to sustain a lot more damage from random debris or stones hitting them so they can take much more abuse.

Also, here are the different levels of abrasion. Whenever I buy a new car, I am a bit OCD with keeping my car spotless 3 seasons of the year. I spend a weekend washing, drying, using clay bar, washing again, 3 varying abrasive levels of polish (which already makes a it not really worth the time and money compared to buying them in bulk), carnauba wax, synthetic wax and look over the paint for any orange peel or imperfections before applying a ceramic coating. It's not perfect, but it makes paint maintenance so much easier. I won't bore you and talk about the internet since scratch resistance is the objective of this instructables thread.

Rusznic 7 years ago

I tried this and it was even worse! I think it depends on the type of toothpaste so look out for that.

If you need to be sure about the results I recommend plexiglass polishing kits. They don't smell so minty tough ;)

RyanO93 5 years ago

I have tried a range of regular white toothpastes and all of them made my glasses look slightly foggy. Are you using a gell type?

EurekaFactory 7 years ago

Well that's too bad! What did you try it on? It shouldn't make it worse. At worse, you should rinse it off and see no difference. At best, it smooths out light scratches. And smells minty.

EurekaFactory 7 years ago

We've also used toothpaste on dull headlights and it helps there, too, at least if they're not too far gone. But it made a significant difference.