Hello, and welcome back to the 8-Bit Guy!
So, in previous episodes, you've seen that I've used a lot of Retrobrite.
And I've used this same method that I came up with a couple of years ago where I use
the Salon creme combined with plastic wrap to keep it from evaporating.
And, that method has been more or less successful for me most of the time.
However, as you have seen, there's been a couple of times where it didn't work so
well.
And, I've received tons of emails over the last year suggesting to me potentially better
methods of retrobriting.
And so, today I'm going to start testing them.
I've collected all of the different chemicals and contraptions and devices needed to perform
a test and I'm going to do it highly scientifically.
The way I'm going to do it is with this keyboard.
This keyboard is very yellowed and it's more or less evenly yellowed, particularly
from this side over.
So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pop off all of these keys.
And I'm going to clean them up.
And then, I'm going to try different methods on each key or set of keys and then at the
end we can compare and see which keys ended up working best on.
And then when we figure out what the winner is I'm going to use that method on this
severely yellowed Macintosh LC II.
In fact, it's almost darned near brown on the back it's yellowed so badly.
So, we'll see how effective, how effectively we can treat that.
So, let's get started!
The first contestant will be the tried and true salon creme, just so I have a base point
of comparison.
I'm also going to use regular hydrogen peroxide.
This would not normally be possible but because the keys are very small I can submerge them
in this.
I had an email from a fan telling me that engine cleaner worked for him.
However, when I went to the auto parts store there didn't seem to be just one type, so
I ended up buying engine cleaner and engine degreaser.
Not sure what the difference is, but I'll test both kinds.
Another email suggested to me to use sodium percarbonate powder.
When mixed with water, this turns into hydrogen peroxide, I think.
Another viewer recommended white vinyl dye.
As this is not a paint, I suppose there is a chance this might work.
We'll see.
And the last thing I'm going to try is my own idea, which is using an ozone generator.
Now the reason I'm trying this is due to an experiment I did almost a year ago.
I didn't take any video of it, but what I did was pour some hydrogen peroxide into
a glass container.
Then I put a small metal pedestal in there and placed a yellowed key on top of it.
Then I covered the top of the container and set it out in the sun.
Interestingly enough, the key turned white even though it was never touching the liquid.
What this told me is that the liquid itself was not causing the color change, rather it
was a gas.
However, it still required UV light because I tried the test again in the dark and it
didn't work.
The question was, did the UV light affect the liquid creating the required gas.
Or did the UV light react with the gas and the plastic directly?
Well, that's what I'm going to try to find out.
Now, I'm not a chemist.
But after reading up on hydrogen peroxide, I thought that maybe one possible result of
this combination might be ozone.
So I bought this ozone generator and I'm going to see what it does.
The first thing I needed to do was remove some keys from this keyboard.
Since the right side of it was yellowed worse than the left, I chose that side for my testing.
These keys were very dirty too, so time to clean them.
Many people have asked me if it is necessary to clean plastic before retrobriting.
To be honest, I've never actually tried it without cleaning.
But, if I care about something enough to retrobrite it in the first place then obviously I care
enough to clean it.
So it just makes sense to do that first.
OK, so these are all clean now, but they do have one problem, which is kind of annoying.
And that's these back sections.
It makes it difficult, if not impossible to get these keys to stand up straight.
Not that this would be a deal breaker under normal circumstances, but for the purposes
of this experiment, it would be helpful if they could lay flat.
So I'm going to use some pliers and remove these little plastic pieces from the bottom.
And try not to cringe too much, but I'm going to cut these little things off too.
I have plenty of these keyboards that are in a lot better shape, so I'm just going
to sacrifice this one in the name of science.
In fact, I actually have another keyboard just like it that is broken that I could take
keys from to make this one whole again if I ever decided to do that.
Anyway, you can see now what I mean, these keys will be a lot easier to work with now.
Of course, every good science experiment should have a control.
What better key to use than the control key itself.
The only problem is, this is the only control key this keyboard has this keyboard is slightly
more yellowed on this side than it is on this side.
In fact, if you compare one of the keys I removed from the other side, you can clearly
see a contrast, so the control key will not actually work as a scientific control, unfortunately.
So, instead I'm going to use the equals key as the control, so it will get no treatment
at all.
So, time to actually get started testing this stuff.
I'm no stranger to the peroxide method here.
So I'll use the number 4 key for this.
Covering the top is not absolutely necessary but sometimes bubbles will cause these keys
to rise to the top and I want to trap the gasses inside the container.
OK, so I'm going to use the number 1 key next, and it will get the vinyl and fabric
dye.
So here goes..
This looks more like spray paint than I was expecting it too.
I'll have to let this dry, but I'm very skeptical of this.
Next up is the number 8 key, and it will be the recipient of the engine cleaner.
Wow, they weren't kidding about the foaming part.
This stuff is like shaving cream.
Well, I'll have to let that sit for a while.
The number 3 key will be the recipient of the engine degreaser product.
Well that stuff looks kind of nasty.
Anyway, I'll come back to this later.
Next up is the number 5 key.
It will be getting the usual treatment that I'm known for, which is the 40% salon creme.
Of course, that's way more than it needs, but oh well.
And last I'm going to use the clear key and the 7 key for the ozone test.
So, the clear key is going to get regular ozone, and then the 7 is going to get ozone
plus UV light.
And the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to use these two bags.
And I'm going to give these bags a little weight so they don't fly away.
So I'm going to stick a couple of these old Eisenhower dollars in here.
All right, so I got this particular ozone generator because it has a hose.
And that way I can direct the ozone wherever I want it to go.
Now, when I turn this thing on, it doesn't start producing ozone right away.
I've noticed it takes about 30 seconds to warm up.
So, I wait until I smell the ozone before I inflate the bags.
So, I just close up the bag as much as possible, then insert the hose in the corner.
And that seems to work pretty well.
Now for the next one.
OK, so these 3 things are going to get UV light.
There is the regular peroxide, then I'm using that along with the measuring tape to
weigh down the one key in the salon creme, because it is a little windy out here.
And last is the bag of ozone, and the coins are working fine to hold that in place.
Unfortunately, it is completely overcast today, so there isn't going to be a ton of UV light.
However, the Sun should come out later this evening or tomorrow.
So I might have to wait until tomorrow to see any results.
Actually, I forgot about the sodium percarbonate.. so I'll put some water in this bowl and
then I'll pour some of that in there.
OK, that's probably more than I needed.
I'm going to cover it too.
I put it outside and after a few minutes I noticed some interesting activity going on
with the sodium per carbonate.
You can actually see some sort of reaction going on.
OK, so it's been about 24 hours, so it's time to look at some of the results.
Now, I only had about 4 hours of sunlight on these items that I was going to use UV
light on, but everything else has been sitting here for 24 hours.
So, let's take a look and see what the results are.Let's start by looking at the two that
received the engine cleaner and engine degreaser.
Looking at these, I don't see any difference at this point.
But let's go ahead and clean them off.
So here they are, they look identical.
And here's our control key, and.. well, I can't tell any difference.
So unless there is some step I'm missing, I think the engine cleaner is not going to
work.
Next, let's look at the vinyl dye.
Haha, it's stuck to the plate here.
Let me see if I can get it off.
All right, so what can I say about it?
Well, I can't argue with the fact that it definitely looks white.
But it doesn't look correct.
It just looks like it's painted.
I'll go ahead and clean it with windex and see if it holds up to that.
OK, that really didn't affect the appearance any.
Here it is compared to our control key.
I'm not sure which one looks worse.
Out of curiosity, I thought I'd try rubbing some alcohol on it and see if it will come
off.
I could see this vinyl dye being a solution in rare circumstances.
But a keyboard would be the last thing I'd use it on.
So it does appear that alcohol was able to rub off some of the dye, leaving the original
yellowed plastic underneath.
So yeah, I don't recommend this method either.Next we'll take a look at the regular hydrogen
peroxide.
And it actually looks pretty good, which is not surprising since this is one of the tried
and true methods I've used before.
Here's a comparison with our control.
You can see it looks quite a bit better.
And here comes the sodium percarbonate.
And this appears to have worked as well.
Here it is next to our control and there is clearly a contrast.
Now it's time to take a look at the salon cream.
This is a tried and true method for me as well, so I pretty much expect this to look
good.
I really only included it as a means to compare effectiveness between these methods.
And here it is compared to the control.
And notice there was no streaking on this key like the poor Osborne had.
The last thing to examine are the two keys that got ozone gas.
Let me take these out of the bag here.
Ok, so interesting result.
Both keys spent 24 hours in a bag filled with ozone, but only the 7 key got UV light along
with it.
In fact, comparing with the control, you can see that ozone by itself is apparently useless.
But ozone with UV seems to work.
However, if you compare with the key from the salon cream, you can see that ozone wasn't
as effective.
I imagine that ozone would probably completely restore the plastic it just probably needs
more than 4 hours.
And, I have another experiment to show you.
During the process of filming this video, I was contacted by a fan of my channel, Richard
Blair, who is a professional chemist.
And he said he had done some experiments on this and he discovered that heat worked just
as well, if not better than UV light.
And that's interesting, because I know the Obsolete Geek and I had a discussion about
that just a few months ago and we were wondering what role heat might actually play in the
retrobrite process.
So, I set out to recreate Richard's experiment and see how it worked for me.
I needed to heat hydrogen peroxide to 150 or 160 degrees Fahrenheit for about 4 hours.
At first I thought of using the toaster oven, but the lowest setting it had was 200 degrees.
My next thought was using the stove.
These controls don't have exact temperature controls, so it will take some experimentation.
I also noticed that it had a warm zone and melt zone, so hopefully those can be set to
lower temperatures.
After all, I don't want to literally melt the plastic, but from what I can tell that
won't happen for ABS plastic until over 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Using an infrared thermometer I was able to find a stable temperature pretty close to
160 degrees.
I had also managed to locate some salon developer that is clear.
In fact, you can see this stuff is not even creamy at all like the other stuff, it's
just clear liquid, which is perfect.
For this test, I'll use the number 2 key.
I'll let that do its thing and check back in 4 hours time.
OK, so here we are 4 hours later.
I can already tell the key looks different.
And here it is compared with the control.
So let's take a look at all of these together.
This is my control, this was ozone gas.
This was ozone with UV light.
This was the hair developer with heat, this was engine cleaner.
Vinyl Dye, Sodium Percarbonate with UV, 3% hydrogen peroxide with UV light, the salon
developer creme with UV light, and last is engine degreaser.
Now I want to take a look at each of these and judge them on how effective they are,
how long it takes, and how difficult it is.
These 4 were simply not effective at all.
The rest of these methods all work, and the only real difference is how long it takes
to get the desired result.
Keep in mind that all of my testing was done for 4 hours.
So, I've ranked them here with how quickly they worked with the peroxide and heat combination
being the fastest result and the ozone gas with UV being the slowest.
Difficulty, on the other hand, depends mostly on how large of an item you are wanting to
work with.
You know, so retrobriting some keys on a keyboard like this or even a keyboard like this, you
know, is probably not a big deal just to take those keys out and put them in a big pot on
the stove.
So you know, hey, that's easy.
But, when you want to scale that up to something as large as a computer case, then things become
a little bit more difficult.
And you know, the ozone gas solution might actually be better for large objects.
I mean, all you would really need is, you know, something like a big zip-lock bag that's
like a lot bigger than this, that you could inflate with the gas and then, you know, leave
it out in the sun for, you know, 8 hours or however long it takes in order for the treatment
to work.
So, the problem is, I haven't been able to find a bag that big that can seal.
Now, I'm sure I'll eventually find one, I'll probably have to order one online,
so I didn't have time to do it for this video, but I actually think that will work
and it may end up being the easiest solution for getting a uniform, as in non-streaking
reatrobrite appearance for some of the larger case pieces.
So, that will be an experiment I'll be doing some time soon.
So next it was time to attempt a retrobrite on this essentially brown Macintosh LC-II.
Of course, first I had to clean it up.
One of the great things I love about the LC series is how easy they are to take apart.
You can pretty much disassemble the entire thing without even needing a screwdriver.
During cleaning, I did manage to slice my pinky finger open, which was lovely.
I did that here on this shield when I was scrubbing back and forth trying to get some
gunk cleaned off.
Anyway, this is the result after a good cleaning.
I also decided to pop out this little card slot cover back here because I wanted to have
a control to compare the finished product and see how much it changed.
I really wanted to do the heat method on the Macintosh LC-II.
But, I discovered that scaling that up to a tub large enough to hold the LC-II was actually
pretty darned difficult.
And, I went all over town looking at different hardware stores, trying to find some kind
of solution, you know, to find a container and some way to heat the liquid up inside
that container.
I even looked at, for example, using some hot water heater components and a thermostat.
And, that may be what I eventually have to do in order to accomplish that.
But, that's going to be a substantial, time-consuming project.
So I don't have time to do that for this episode.
But, considering how much retrobriting I actually do, I think it would be a good investment
for me to try to build something like that in the near future, so you'll probably be
seeing something like that in a few months.
In the meantime, I decided to try a little bit new technique for me, anyway.
I used a big storage crate, and placed the computer in there.
Unfortunately, I couldn't really figure out a good way to get both pieces in there.
UV will still play an important role and I wanted exposure to that.
So I decided to just do one piece at a time.
Also, since I'm going to just fill this with water, placing them on top of each other
would mean even more water, thus diluting the peroxide I'm going to mix with it.
And here comes the salon care 40 volume developer.
I'm just poured the whole thing in there.
By the way, I have been saying this is 40% peroxide.
But I was recently corrected on this, and apparently 40 volume doesn't mean 40%.
Apparently it's more like 12% peroxide.
I covered the top with some clear plastic to help with the greenhouse effect to increase
the temperature.
After a few hours in the Texas sun, I measured the temperature of the side of the container
and found it to be around 130 degrees, although later I measured it at 138.
After about 6 hours in the sun, I decided it was time to see what the result was.
Even before removing it, I could see a dramatic change.
And yes, it was hot!
I rinsed it all of the peroxide off with the garden sprayer.
The corrosion you see in there was already there before I started, but I noticed it did
get a little worse, which I sort of expected.
But I figured that was better than trying to remove that shield.
Time to put in the bottom piece.
And here's the result on the top piece.
At first glance it looks immaculate, however, upon further inspection I can see a very slight
tint of yellowing still right in this area.
But otherwise, it looks amazing considering how it looked before.
And even the badge on the front is just fine.
OK, so the next day it was time to check on the bottom piece of the LC-II.
And yes, that rock was quite hot, but I needed that because this piece wanted to float.
Well, the bottom looks great, but it really wasn't the main problem anyway, the rear
is definitely improved but not as much as I'd like.
I suspect this is because it was not getting much direct sunlight since the sides of the
container were blocking light from coming in at that angle.
Nevertheless, you can see a huge difference with the little slot cover here, so it's
still remarkable.
In fact, if I put the cover on, it doesn't look too bad just like it is, although that
slot cover sticks out like a sore thumb.
OK, so I decided to put that bottom piece back outside in the solution.
The sun is already set for today, but it will be out there again tomorrow, and hopefully
another day in the sun will give it, you know make it look as nice as the top piece does.
And I suppose it will have the honor of possibly being the only thing to be retrobrited in
the middle of a solar eclipse.
Because, the solar eclipse is coming tomorrow.
Of course, here in Dallas, we're not getting a total eclipse, we're getting about 75
to 80%.
That will actually interfere with the process a little bit, but I guess it will be kind
of neat to say, hey my computer was retrobrited in the middle of the eclipse.
Anyway, I would love to show that, but I really need to get this video finished.
It's taken a lot longer than I originally anticipated.
In fact, part of the reason is because I was in New York last week at the Long Island retro
game convention, which was pretty cool because it took place inside of an aviation museum
and I got to meet several of you guys there at my booth, so it was nice meeting you and
of course I'm going to be in Portland again this October for the retro game expo they
have there, so I look forward again to seeing many of you guys there!
So, I hope some of these techniques I showed will help many of you do retrobriting projects
on your own.
And, I hope to follow up eventually with the ozone treatment and see how that works out
and constructing my tub.
So, we'll see how all of that works out, and so I encourage you to stick around and
subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you next time!
For more infomation >> EMPRENDER ES UNA MONTAÑA RUSA - #GVONTHEGO 25 - Duration: 9:49. 
For more infomation >> NO SE ACEPTAN DEVOLUCIONES-PEQUEÑO_FRAGMENTO-DE-LA-pelicula_HD - Duration: 29:35. 
For more infomation >> Cantantes Coreanas Intentan Cantar en Español! ft BP Rania - Duration: 11:21. 
For more infomation >> La actriz y cantante Nati Mistral murió - Duration: 2:03. 
For more infomation >> Tips To Grow Your Gym
For more infomation >> Kỳ thủ Lê Quang Liêm -con đường trở thành nhà vô địch. - Duration: 2:00. 
For more infomation >> Nghe Thử Đi - Bạn Sẽ Nghiện Nó Đấy,Nhạc Điện Tử Cực Hay Dành Cho Game Thủ - 24H Online Không Mệt Mỏi - Duration: 55:42. 
For more infomation >> Volvo V70 2.4 Edition I AIRCO LEDER LMV CRUIS BOEKJES - Duration: 0:52. 
For more infomation >> Five Star TBR Book Predictions - Duration: 8:16. 
For more infomation >> 황현정 아나운서 남편 이재웅, 황현정 성형 의혹 - Duration: 12:47. 
For more infomation >> 강수정 남편 매트김 해고와 수입, 강수정 근황과 이혼 루머 - Duration: 15:32. 
For more infomation >> Crews battling brush fire near Black Canyon City - Duration: 0:24. 
For more infomation >> 최양락 팽현숙 재산 부동산 투기 논란/최양락 팽현숙 딸 아들 - Duration: 24:19. 
For more infomation >> MMA Stud Rapid Sleeper Submission w/ Great Views of His After Loss - Duration: 1:36. 
For more infomation >> '태국 무개념 인터뷰' 블락비, 건방진 아이돌의 부끄러운 나라망신! 소속사 해명이 더 가관! - Duration: 16:44. 
For more infomation >> Alvorada com Omar Nascimento - 21/08/2017 - Duration: 2:04. 
For more infomation >> THE WALKING DEAD (SEASON 8 NEW) / The walking dead temporada 8 trailer!! - Duration: 1:05. 
For more infomation >> Tim Ferriss | As 10 Grandes Ideias - Duration: 4:46. 
For more infomation >> LARISSA MANOELA COMENTA SOBRE FIM DE NAMORO COM THOMAZ COSTA - Duration: 2:27. 
No comments:
Post a Comment