Has anyone had any success in neutralising the sticky black 'rubber' that manifests itself after several years on Chinese equipment. I have a large torch from Aldi with a rubber handle, rubberised glass rim and stand covered in this black stuff and it is oozing some sticky liquid. I noticed also some old style TV remote controls decay like this, I blamed my dad for using cream on his hands, but that was not the case.
No its been an issue for years, some shavers cameras binoculars and sundry other things even portable radios do this. Its not a cheap Chinese crap problem its the actual material used that leaches the very substance that makes it feel like rubber. In fact one famous cassette mechanism made by Wollensac was notorious for the pressure roller suddenly turning to a gloopy buddle on the bottom of the deck due to this issue. Its just not stable enough over time. It can get worse if its subjected to cold and hot temperatures as well as mechanical deformation.
I'm sure there is a chemist out there who can tell us the technical reason. Brian
Ok Brian thanks, I have the parts soaking in a weak vinegar solution at the moment, that should kill the stickiness if it is silicone based. Youtube items suggest acetone, but that is too harsh and could dissolve the item. Isopropyl alcohol might be a good choice.
It?s a bastard to remove. I have some Kef ?egg? loudspeakers that went all sticky. Tried every solvent we could lay our hands on but never found anything that was particularly effective. Eventually I disassembled them and took them to an alloy wheel refurbisher who shot blasted and recoated them.
Could be worse - I've got a couple of hand tools with that sort of coating, and it's covered in what looks like mould. Wiped with a bleach solution seems to have fixed it for now.
The stupid "soft touch" coating degrades over time normally fairly slowly as in years but I note that the coating on the trimmer that SWMBO'd used to cut my hair a month or so back has now gone sticky. It was fine before and several years old. She uses hand cream, I don't...
As for cleaning up, the last object I had that suffered this problem responded well to meths, blue paper roll and elbow grease. The trimmer is in line for the same.
+1 or meths. Need to rub in a consistent direction to remove the gunk or it just moves about. Tiny squirt of silicone based furniture "polish" will mostly bring back the shine to the base plastic.
Surprisingly the answer is yes. I tried it (as recommended here some years ago) and it worked for me on several partly decomposed black vinyl rubbery things including a Psion 3c, a torch and a vacuum cleaner.
It does require a fair amount of patient and elbow grease to do a good job and there is a chance that other hard plastic bits will get damaged.
Don't wear any clothes you are fond of the black gunk sticks to everything it touches!
It slowly depolymerises at the surface becoming sticky tacky horrible probably the from effects of ozone and NOx in the air.
The surprise solvent for the tacky black stuff which will allow you to polish off the surface without destroying the sound material underneath is brake fluid (wear gloves when using it as a cleaning fluid!).
I found some when clearing out my dad's garage and having several such scrap tacky objects lying around couldn't resist trying it out. To my immense surprise it worked!
As others have said some solvents will remove it. But that will only be temporary - it will return.
If you don't mind how it looks, the quickest,and cheapest remedy is talcum powder (I guess flour would do as well). Covering it with the fine powder removes the stickiness immediately without having to worry about solvents. It is also simple to reapply when the stickiness reappears.
It's odd, really. We're told just how bad plastics are for the environment since they have a very long life. But often their life isn't good enough for the original application. Lots of moulded plastic on the old car which has gone brittle.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.