What's the cheapest way to retrobright something? I have a lot of old computers and I need at least 20 gallons of this stuff to do all of them.
Leave it in direct sunlight in summer. It's free.
>>10867970Saliva works better.
>>10867970I mean I guess you could spray paint them, maybe
You can tell which of these were left sitting in the sun and which weren't. The orange color is broken up plastic debris caused by UV damage. Beige/white has fallen out of favor in consumer electronics since ~~2000 as black is much more durable and resistant to UVs (in fact to the point where it's a problem because you can't fucking recycle it).
>how do I retrobright?>PUT THEM IN SUNLIGHT UNTIL THE BREAK>SPIT ON THEM>PAINT THEM GRAY>LURE PEOPLE ON CRAIGSLIST WITH CHEAP CRT TELEVISIONS THEN SACRIFICE THEM TO SATAN IN EXCHANGE FOR GOING BACK IN TIME TO WHEN YOU WERE STILL 8 AND HAPPY
>>10868003What I mean is black plastic is carbonized to produce that color. This means it's highly resistant to UVs but also almost non-recycleable as it won't break down and the carbonizing is also permanent; you can't recycle it and turn it to another color. Next to white and beige the plastic color that is the most prone to UV damage is red (blue is quite resistant).
>>10867970the yellow color means it sat in a sunny windowsill. window glass blocks UV-B but not UV-C rays. by putting it outdoors where it's exposed to UV-B rays a bleaching effect is caused.
>>10868003>>10868014And sometimes there's horrible stuff like 90s Mac cases which were made of ultra-cheap recycled ABS plastic that lacks the structural strength of plastic made with virgin pellets.
>>10868024I always wondered what the deal was with those cases. Seems like every old Mac you see from the 90s has brittle plastic that breaks when you touch it. Haven't seen that problem in any other computer manufacturer from the 80s or 90s. How did they get away with selling computers that were more expensive than everything else while using such shitty cheap plastic in them?
>>10868026Apple was almost bankrupt in 1993-96. They saved money by using shitty recycled plastic in their cases which would turn to dust if you gave it a funny look.
>>10868005>PUT THEM IN SUNLIGHT UNTIL THE BREAKIt's funny, every time I post that picture people assume I'm trolling. Things you leave in the sun don't yellow, they whiten. What makes them yellow is sun through windows or other glasses. But hey if you don't want to believe me and get ripped off with your fucking retrobright, go ahead.
>>10868005I can vouch for that last one. I've done it once before.
>>10868049thats true when the uv lights pass through the window is transmogrifies the solar rays which makes gods natural plastic to grow weak. If you simply give this plastic the natural sunlight, it craves, it will thrive.
>>10868059wtf I just tried this and trees started growing on my gameboy you fucker
It was company policy back then that Apple had to make at least 50% profit on every machine sold.
Another cost-saving measure would be to skimp on the butadiene content in the plastic. Butadine is what gives ABS its flexibility and can range from 2-20% of the plastic mix, but it's also the most expensive component in there and then you end up with an Atari 2600 Jr. and its notoriously brittle cases because it was Tramiel-era Atari.
>>10868063>back then
Just a suggestion, if you have something with yellowed plastic that you don't know the history of (as in, you got it secondhand, especially from Japan), I suggest using Krud Kutter on it. It does a great job of removing stuff like nicotine stains. Just be careful of using it on painted surfaces, as it can strip certain types of paint if you let it sit too long or scrub it too hard
>>10868062Those are cumshrooms.Eat them to restore the vitality of youth.
op I can help you out but you're going to need an air fryer, bleach, and a lot of hot glue
>>10868085well yeah, today it is closer to 80%.
There are certain PAL Xboxes manufactured in Hungary with plastic that rivals 1995 Apple for sheer low quality.
>>10867973>sunlight causes yellowing>sunlight fixes yellowing This seems like an obvious troll. The pictures are in reverse order.
>>10868235the sun produces gamma rays which whiten plastic but those are blocked by glass so if the sunlight goes through a window then only the destructive microwave radiation remains
>>10868235Sunlight through a window causes yellowing. Direct outdoor sunlight whitens things.
i did this to a few of my Nes and Snes controllers last year, proccess is:buy some big ziploc bags, put a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide inside with the yellowed plastic and blow air into the bag so that it balloons then close it.Let it sit for 2 days in direct sunlight, the trick is to watch for the bag to be full of air, that way the gas liberatede by the hydrogen peroxide can do its job.It worked pretty well, my controllers went from a 5 / 10 in the yellow scale, to a solid 8 / 10. Im planning on doing this to my Nes and Snes consoles, i have a few of each.
FYI: the yellowing will come back and will be even worse.
>>10867970The yellowing is caused by grease and gas,never used retrobright just simple hot water,lemon juice abd rub it over,the yellowing gets removed after 2 or 3 times.>>10868003Black became common because you don't need to clean it,simple as that.Even if it gets dirt from grease and gas in the air nobody will notice it because of the black color.
>>10867970Just clean it with cleaning chemicals like >>10868140 said. If your worried about fucking up painted text then clean arround it.
>>10867970I got u nigga. The secret is salon care 40 from Amazon or a hair store. And you need cling wrap. The hair cream is just peroxide that's thickened with starch so it clings to the plastic. Brush that shit on so it covers everything, then wrap it up with cling wrap. This holds the cream in place so you don't need to use 20 gallons of bullshit. Then you pick between light and heat to supply energy to the reaction. I prefer heat but you can get a shit load of led strips for cheap off of amazon. Get a plastic container, cover the inside with foil, and stick all your shit in there.
If you do absolutely nothing then in another 40 years or so the compounds responsible for the discoloration themselves will break down and all your old hardware will look brand new again
Real chads do the retrobrite and have beautiful gear. The typical virgin does nothing and pretends to be an expert
>>10868435Is there a reason why you have to use cling wrap? If it's already thickened with starch won't it stay in place by itself?
>>10868458I find it helps keep the surface evenly saturated for hours. Prevents evaporation, and if the mixture becomes runny due to heat, the wrap keeps it all up against the plastic. Just a nice way to set it and forget it and use less peroxide overall
just 3d print a new shell...
Retrobrighting is completely soulless and sterile
Enjoy your cigarette yellow turd console, real men prefer results
>not just vinyl wrapping your retro consolesngmi
Yeah because making your console look like a floor in Mexico is so much better than just looking completely normal
>>10868475Resin printers are still expensive but getting cheaper. They produce stuff that's a lot more like injection molded plastic than the awful shit you get from a filament printer though.>>10868238Yes, glass blocks UV-B rays but UV-C passes right through it.
>>10868530anon it takes approximately 18ft of glass to block out uv light do you live in a deep water aquarium
The issue is that retrobrighting or even leaving them out in the sun damages the plastic even more. It becomes slightly more brittle.The true chad solution is to 3d print your own mold and cast a new shell with the same color and markings.
>remove case>mount internal components in a decorative frame>hang it on your wallname 1 flaw
ah yes those fucking gold flake OOT carts that crumble apart because the gold flake fatally compromised the structure of the plastic
>>10868675??? mine is fine
Maybe anon can settle this for me... But I've HEARD some claim that retrobriting makes plastics slightly more brittle. It sounds like some are just retrobriting, putting their stuff back together and not realizing that their 40 year old plastic already was brittle... But does anon know anything?
>>10868692I guess chemistry works differently in your dimension
>>10868457The unfortunate thing is the RB results revert fairly quickly. My original Famicom looked pretty decent after I RBed it some years ago, but now it is as yellow as ever. >inb4 don't set it in a windowsill lmaoooI have another Famicom which was never particularly yellowed, and even though I haven't done any sort of deyellowing to it, it still looks more or less the same as when I got it. Some pieces are just more prone to it than others, and while RB will indeed help for a time, it's probably going to be yellowing again in a few years.
>>10868695>putting their stuff back together and not realizing that their 40 year old plastic already was brittleIf it's yellowed it already has sun damage to the top layer of the plastic. the fact of it being 40 or whatever years old has nothing to do with why it's brittle, it got that way because it was exposed to sunlight and that was why white and beige plastics were largely abandoned after the 90s.
it just comes back worse than before if you retrobrite it
>stored all my retro junk in a air conditioned container filled with inert nitrogen
>>10868709>I have another Famicom which was never particularly yellowed, andIt probably didn't sit near a windowsill. There's nothing ABS plastic hates more than UV radiation (plastics vary in their sensitivity but ABS is particularly bad with it).
>>10868724Jesus anon, have you seen what nitrogen does to plastics after a couple years?
>>10868736dude it's a frogspammer. why did you give it a (You) instead of reporting it for GR6?
>>10868736>Earth's atmosphere is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, and 0.1 percent other gases
>>10868003it's nice to know ZX Spectrum and Sega consoles are black so they don't have this issue with turning that sickly shade of yellow
>>10868727And as long as it was in my possession it never sat on a windowsill, even after the RB treatment, yet it reyellowed to be more yellowed than my other FC which I never hit with RB.
>>10868005>post wojaks at them until they go away!
>>10868763>wojakbriteFUND IT
US model SNES were known to have yellowing issues but not evenly; different parts of the shell would yellow but others don't and this stopped being a problem on one chip units as they switched to a different plastic mixture.
>>10868738
>>10868235>>10867973Of course its a fucking troll, shitposters have been filling nu/vr ever since the flu
>>10868736It's fine, he used the inert kind so it can't react with the plastic.
>>10868740>0.1 percent other gasess-sorry
>>10867970>What's the cheapest wayPaint.
>>10868715I've heard of things yellowing even in basements where there's been no sun exposure. Infact, I've heard of people retrobriting a console, and it going piss yellow again even when kept away from the sun entirely
>>10868239Even if this were true, I live in a super humid tropical environment and I doubt leaving anything outside would be good for it. Anything paper will be soaking wet in a day, anything metal will rust, and anything wooden will start to crumble. Don't know how plastic would do but I still wouldn't risk it.
>>10869657sometimes there's just shitty plastic mixes like on SNES shells where pieces of the shell yellow and other pieces don't
>>10869657Some plastics formulations were fucked up at the factory so bad that nothing you do matters. Other times it's UV and retrobrighting is a lasting solution.
>>10868376stop farting on your consoles
do NOT leave your plastic in the sunit will become brittle as fuck and snap apart
>>10868235Makes perfect sense to me.
>>10867970Are you sure you want to do that? It makes the plastic weaker. Personally I would look into replacement options if it's that bad.
>>10867970>What's the cheapest way to retrobright something?
>>10868005>>PAINT THEM GRAYDoes this work/
keep plastic out of sun. it doesn't like that very much.
The yellowing is not caused by UV light. If it was, how could putting plastic outside in UV light whiten it?I'm to scared to fck up my collection by covering it in goo. Just Google retrobrite streaking. Leaving the cases outside in the sun for a few days has worked well for me, nice evening results.Of course, it's never going to be back to "factory" colours, but my Atari ST with weird yellow streaks was fixed - all one even colour now.
>>10873385hey retard, this was already discussed in the thread>sunlight through a window=yellowing>direct outdoor sunlight=whitening
>>10872232No, Nintendium resists paint. It'll simply slide off.
>>10873389I have some old computers that had no yellowing, then sat in complete darkness in a basement for 20 years, and are now yellow, so I don't think that's it either.
If I buy a gallon of this 12% hydrogen peroxide and dilute it by half to 6%, will that be enough to work for one pass? And then can I keep reusing it infinitely or does the hydrogen peroxide itself evaporate or break down in the sun? This stuff is $20 for a gallon and I don't want to spend more than that.
steel woolthe discoloration is only 1 atom thick
>>10873579It turns into water outside of the dark bottle. That being said yeah that would probably do the trick for whiteninganything. Potentially better with artificial light depending on the uv in your area on the day. It'll need to go longer the more you dilute.
>>10873607>>10873554i have a SNES with part of the shell yellowed and the rest not but none of the yellowed part is brittle or anything so whatever caused that discoloration was clearly not UV damage. some swear it was caused by bromine used as fireproofing in the plastic but others disagree.
why don't they just sell repro shells for consoles
>>10873656Lots of people make and sell those.
>>10873656Here's your repro, bro
>>10873656who is this "they"?
>>10873656I read a post years ago where some anon claimed that nobody has the ability to make the kind of beige plastic that these things were made out of anymore. Something about the formulas being lost forever or the materials no longer being available. Notice how the new SNES and N64 controllers Nintendo made for the Switch have a completely different plastic texture from the original ones and feel a lot flimsier.
>>10873660th-the government...?
>>10873651The claim is that the bromine is not chemically bonded to anything in the plastic matrix so it floats to the surface of it and causes that discoloration.
>>10873662sounds like a load of barnacles to me.>Notice how the new SNES and N64 controllers Nintendo made for the Switch have a completely different plastic texture from the original ones and feel a lot flimsier.that's called being cheap and using a lower grade plastic on purpose
>>10873673not cool to use language like that bro there are minors on this website
>>10873579Combine that with cornstarch to make it a goo and then it will be easier to use.
>>10873673I have real snes controllers and the new ones from the snes mini and they feel exactly the sameSame for PS1 controllersEveryone saying they're different are dumb faggots that probably don't even own the old ones.
>>10873687Nintendo presumably has all the specs in the archives so they would know exactly what materials and manufacturing techniques went into the originals. There's still new Genesis controllers being made because Sega licensed it out to Majesco and supplied the specs for them.
