Ccondo,
No, the scratches cannot be removed similar to uncoated acrylic. Imagine "regular" acrylic, coated in <essentially> a micro thin layer of glass. When this thin layer gets scratched, you cannot sand this out. If you do, you'll end up removing more of the coating, the appearance of this is very obvious. Furthermore, any scratch (and attempt to clean up) becomes a weak point at which the coating will tend to flake off over time, especially under stress & considering water absorpion and deflection, very ugly.
IMO, Spartech Polycast is the best commercial material on the market. The consistency of the material, overage, color & size options, and thickness make it superior (IMO) to the other brands.
*Polycast, Acrylite GP, & Plexiglas G are all very consistent materials. Chemcast may in time prove itself to be included. Most other brands are not nearly as consistent in color (from batch to batch) and mole wt which makes for material that you can count on to behave the same way during fabrication.
*As for thickness, eg., 4 x 8' (1/2" thick) sheets of Polycast actually measure 51 x 100" which allows more options in use. Other brands are smaller, Acrylite GP is 49.75 x 99". May not seem like a big deal to most but is for fabricators.
*Poycast offers more color & size options than any other commercially available brand. The only downside is that they do not make 4 x 10' or 5 x 10' sheets as Acrylite does. But Polycast will make 6 x 10' sheets of heavy gauge (1"+) which other mfrs are not really willing to do.
*I say thickness as Polycast is about the only material left that still makes their material in imperial thickness where 1/2" is actual .500" whereas the other brands sell 12mm (.472"). This will create noticeable differences in deflection rates.
*They offer other services as well (co-casting, stretching, Level I, II, & III BR, etc) but prolly beyond the scope of this post.
It costs a little more but you get what you pay for. For reasons above and a few more, Polycast has earned loyalty from many fabricators (including myself) as simply the best, again IMO
HTH,
James
