How to properly polish phone camera plastic cover?

Question

I have never had any experience with polishing. I thought dremel and polishing accessories would solve the problem, but apparently they did not.
I tried to polish the mobile phone camera cover with dremel polishing wheel 13mm (414), but had no success. I did it at ~13000 RPM using dremel polishing compound (421). The images are still foggy and contrast edges are smudgy. Am I doing it wrong?
How to polish it to glassy flat surface?

rackandboneman · Accepted Answer

The problem is, any clear piece of plastic or glass that is not FLAT to an extremely precise standard is going to act as a lens or prism of some sort, adding distortions and aberrations. Using a polishing wheel is most certainly not going to help making a surface perfectly flat.
In addition, if the surface is plastic, most abrasive compounds you would use will actually embed abrasive particles into the plastic - even worse if the particles are transparent. There are special polishing pastes made for mobile phone displays, these might be one of the better fits. You would need something that is fine enough to not create scratches that are anywhere near as wide as the wavelength of blue light.
IIRC, plastic surfaces are often polished chemically, using solvents etc. - but any experimentation could truly ruin the surface here.

Tyzoid · Answer

Polishing is only the last step in a series of steps to get a clear finish.
First, you need to get out the scratches, which you do by (counter intuitively) adding more (but smaller) scratches. Polishing compound, on its own (unless you want to spend days polishing the same spot) can't cut deep enough to get down to the scratches.
If you want to get those deep scratches out, you'll need to start with a higher grit abrasive, then work your way up the grits until you get to polishing.
Side note: I wouldn't ever recommend someone take a dremel tool or abrasive to a phone or lens, unless no other option exists.

How to properly polish phone camera plastic cover?

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