I've taken an 8mm film projector out of storage to find that the drive belts are now a sticky liquefied mess.
What is the best way to clean up this stuff - what will do the best job of dissolving it without spreading it everywhere?
And what causes this kind of deterioration? The foam in old cameras does just the same thing.
Daniele
"D.M. Procida" wrote in message news:1jwlng7.106sh5c1kg05z6N% snipped-for-privacy@apple-juice.co.uk...
A picture might help. Can you dismantle any of it?
And Ferrograph pinch rollers and idler wheels of a certain age (Series
7).
One bit of gooey liquefied rubber looks pretty much like another, to be honest.
Dismantling the thing if necessary won't be a problem - what I'm really asking for advice about is what solvent will do the job best.
Daniele
Try lighter fuel.
Thats fairly innocuous.
Then cellulose thinners or nail varnish removal, if that doesn't shift it.
Seems to happen to the scroll wheels on all my mice, something in oils from the skin attacking the rubber?
I would try IPA first since it leave no residue itself and should be safe on plastics.
Time and air presumably, but why I don't know.
Cor - I've still got a Ferrograph wow and flutter meter lurking somewhere.
I assume you mean isopropyl alcohol, rather than beer.
I've only bought isopropyl alcohol in very small quantities, as tape head cleaner - where can I get larger quantities?
Daniele
eBay. I paid about 6 quid for a litre.
Ordinary alcohol is much the same stuff, and much cheaper.
Sounds like the OP needs a good set of solvents.
NT
Great, thanks.
You can get just about anything in chemists nowadays, from your lunch to DIY paternity kits, but not actual chemicals.
Daniele
I have plenty of them, but it's also useful to know what's best for what. Lighter fluid and white spirit finally got the liquefied foam out of a couple of cameras I was working on recently, but it was a horrific job.
Daniele
And CPC in 200 - 400 ml aerosol cans...
Indeed. Try getting quantities of acetone!
(foam cleaner from screwfix/toolstation - 500ml can!)
I use isopropyl alcohol usually - dismantle and clean parts individually so you don't get anything where it shouldn't be (although you can happily wash electrical parts in ipa too). Scrape whatever gunk you can off first, then use the ipa on the rest.
At a pinch, the crappy stuff that chemists (probably!) still sell with around 70% alcohol content (often sold as rubbing alocohol) will do the job, but the purer you can get the better (the stuff I picked up from a chemist here is 97%)
For really serious messes on metal parts, something like Goo Gone might be worth a try too, but I'm not sure I'd risk it on plastic components just in case.
I'm not sure that anybody knows for sure. I've seen it plenty of times in the pinch rollers on old computer tape drives (amongst other things), and it can happen on one drive while another of similar vintage and stored in the same environment can be fine. That possibly suggests that it was ultimately down to something during the manufacturing process, rather than being age-related or environmental.
cheers
Jules
What do you mean by 'ordinary alcohol'? If I see something described simply as alcohol I'd assume that it's ethanol, and the duty on that is =A323.80 a litre in the uk unless it's denatured as in methylated spirits - which may be ok for this sort of job though I prefer not to use it as I've sometimes seen a slight residue. Incidentally, if the eBay price of =A36 for a litre of IPA includes postage, which would bring it in line with what I've paid, it actually works out about the same price as meths.
For me it's cognac.
Why does *adding* something to alcohol make it denatured? It doesn't seem to have any connection with biochemical denaturing (of proteins).
I've also seen it claimed that homogenising milk denatures it, but I don't understand how that could occur.
Daniele
I selected the word in your post and went:
NT-NewsWatcher -> Services -> Look up in Dictionary. Which gave the following:
denature
verb [ trans. ] [often as adj.] (denatured)
take away or alter the natural qualities of : empty verbalisms and denatured ceremonies.
? make (alcohol) unfit for drinking by the addition of toxic or foul-tasting substances.
? Biochemistry destroy the characteristic properties of (a protein or other biological macromolecule) by heat, acidity, or other effects that disrupt its molecular conformation.
I got 250ml for £2.49 on Ebay, and it's allegedly 99.9% pure.
Today I saw some in Maplin's - £14.99 for a litre can. I didn't notice the purity though.
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