My first attempts at Retr0bright

That was my 300th post by the way, go me!

 

I think different batches and types of plastics might behave differently. I do not have any hard data about this but just notice for exemple the old NES. They never yellow inside that I have seen. They only yellow on the parts exposed to UV. The old SNES however yellows uniformly inside out. My old famicom that I retrobrighted about 2 years ago seems to have kept stable Its creamish color but I do not think it is more than it was right afte I was done whitening it. But then it was not THAT yellow to begin with.

 

I was mainly talking about super famicom/snes consoles but I just got another launch model snes not to long ago that is pretty much it's original color.

I'm going to try to restore a sfc and my pal snes again but this time I will clear coat it but will try to wet sand it so it wont show up as much but I do have a nasty yellow snes controller that I will do first got to see how it turns out with a clear coat.

 

The main thing that has hold me off of doing this is the weather and the many different methods to do this.
If you search for a Retrobright tutorial, there are a dozen ways to do it, but which one is the best ?
And when I am ready to do it, the weather is cloudy, so there is no point to do it anyway.

 

book a few hours in a tanning booth

 

This is what the whole thread is about. We're trying to find out which way works the best. I'm gonna try the same method again tomorrow, but covered and see how that goes. Chief and I will do all the experimenting for you so you don't have to

 

By the time I got around to picking up some hydrogen peroxide the sun was gone, so I'll be testing this out tomorrow. I'm going to try just painting the parts with hydrogen peroxide (bottle says 2.5 - 3.5%), and wrapping them in cling wrap.

 

Maybe investing in some UV lights is a good ideasince you don't need the sun around to do it.

 

I live in eastern Canada and the place is not particularly know for its hot and sunny weather. Really there is about 2-3 months of retrobright compatible weather in a year.

However from what I tried during those months, the Sun beats the UV lamp all the way. I purchased some CFL black lights but it pales in comparison to the effect I get from pure Sun outside.

Also, I pretty much only use Oxy clean and water now. My experience with full fledged retrobright amounted to mixed, inconsistent results as well as being costly on time and money.

What I do is I use hot glue to tack the part at the bottom of a transparent plastic box, then I just put it outside and pour over water and oxy clean powder. It is done very quickly compared to the official retrobright recipe. It is not as strong but it gives more uniform result VS what I experienced with retrobright.

I mainly sell refurbished consoles on ebay and use this technique to de-yellow them a bit. If the parts are only lightly yellowed it can actually completely reverse the effect. For heavily yellowed parts it wont fix it all but it still gives me an edge over other refurbished console resellers

 

Max what type of UV lamps did you buy? There are a few types some don't work as well as others..

 

So using just plain 2.5 - 3.5% hydrogen peroxide didn't work at all. It's possibly because there wasn't much sun on my apartment balcony today, but nevertheless I'm going to try the gel method later on this week.

 

what peroxide did you use? Liquid or creme

 

I used your standard socket 13w CFL black light. (eqv 60w ?)

 

Black lights are not the correct wavelength to react with peroxide..
http://www.americanairandwater.com/uv-facts/uv-types.htm

Hydrogen peroxide only absorbs UV light at wavelengths less than 300 nm.
Blacklights UV-A produce UV light in the 315nm to 400nm wavelength ranges.

In order for the Hydrogen Peroxide to adsorb the UV light and thus work you'll need either:

UV-B (315nm - 280nm) THIS IS DANGEROUS
UV-C (280nm - 200nm) Germicidal Ultraviolet at 254nm, is most commonly used in water filtration.
UV-V (200nm - 100nm) Vacuum UV

 

I have used the 3.5% hydrogen peroxide (liquid) - works fine (with the addition of bleach with active oxygen). 2 days by 6-7 hours of sunshine. Maybe you really were not enough sun or your glazed balcony - the window glass absorbs ultraviolet light.

 

2 DAYS?! Why on earth would I leave it out for 2 days? If it takes that long then it's pointless and ineffective for my uses (restoring consoles to sell). I don't have any glass on my balcony, hence it being called a balcony - it's outside.

 

I deyellowed remote control from PSX-DESR and it was very yellowed. Two days later yellowing disappeared and he became an ordinary white-gray. Maybe you have not much yellowed parts and require less time.

 

I have lots of really yellowed Super Famicoms and Famicoms I need to clean up, so I need a less time-consuming approach, yeah.

 

So you know when I tried to retrobright a famicom the back stickers faded big time.

 

Replacement sticker sets can be bought cheaply.