These olympic plates are made from cast iron and have round edges so you wont hurt your hands on the edges the weight of the plate is embossed on the plate raised so its easy to read the weight size and the plates are painted in a tough black paint that wont flake and wont chip r the plates have a cross rib for extra strength so they will survive dropping again and again and the extra thick hole area ensures that plates smashing against each other will not damage the olympic plates in any