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How does heat reshape 3D prints or shrink-wrap?
Heat is the ultimate untangler. When you warm a solid amorphous polymer, you push it past its glass transition temperature. The locked chains suddenly gain enough energy to wiggle and slide. This is how 3D printers squeeze plastic through a nozzle, and how shrink-wrap relaxes back into its original, tightly bunched state when heated.
Action
The next time you use plastic shrink-wrap, think of it as a sheet of highly stretched, frozen polymer chains waiting for heat to let them curl back up.
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