We have some Kef speakers (cast alloy construction) that had that silky rubber coating. Needless to say this coating is a ghastly sticky mess.
We?re using acetone at present but wondering if there?s a better solvent to remove this horrid stuff. Not too worried if it removes the underlying paint as some has come off already.
Wondering about petrol but not the nicest stuff to work with...
I've removed this vile stuff from a few cameras and binoculars as well as plastic (computer mice) using White Spirit. Doesn't harm plastic and a microfibre cloth with copious amounts of white spirit and patience works well.
This was discussed over in uk.tech.digital-tv very recently. One point raised was that no matter what solvent you use, the sticky goo will come through again in a matter of weeks/months.
Is there any Fablon-like adhesive vinyl material which you could use to permanently cover the sticky surface and wouldn't look too bad? Loads on ebay, but I've no idea whether or not it is any good.
OK. Drastic, but effective. I had assumed you were just trying to remove the sticky mess which leaches out of the rubber stuff rather than the whole coat.
Didn't realise they were egg-shaped. No, Fablon definitely won't do!
There have been a lot of threads on this stuff in various groups recently and I've not seen any consensus on what to do. If it is just a coating then it probably does have a solvent if you can identify what the paint is. I would however suggest that also you check up on the speaker units surrounds cones and suspension, as many speakers of a similar age seem to be almost write offs due to the plastic going hard, or falling to bits. Also be aware that if you create any dust from removal of the coating its going to be bad news for speakers.
Was it by any chance 3M Nextel? If it was then they might know the solvent, but I have to say that particular paint was used for defence jobs and nobody reported problems other than the occasional chip due to poor bonding to the in underlying material, usually metal. Brian
The problem is finding a solvent which doesn't dissolve everything else as well as the coating. The ones I tried were acetone (pretty useless on the rubber but turned many other plastics into goo). Isopropanol (little or no effect on the coating but safe on almost everything). Ethanol and Methanol - as for Isopropanol. Ether (quite effective but difficult to source and for use outdoors only. Methylene Chloride (removed the coating but also the various thermoplastic substrates and again, only use outdoors). White Spirit (removed the coating more easily than I had expected when used with microfibre cloth and pretty harmless to other plastics etc. )
Eventually I settled on the white spirit as being benign as far as user and various substrates were concerned but also quite effective at removing the goo after leaving it covered in a rag soaked in white spirit for half an hour and then attacking it with a microfibre cloth soaked in white spirit. The soft rubber coating certainly didn't come back afterwards.
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