NFGx
Professional
Like most of the Cyber Lead cabs out there, mine's a lovely brown colour not entirely unlike its original purple, and what was once white is now a consistent yellow hue. So I'm going to try and restore it to its glory.
I'm not the first and I won't be the last, but I thought I'd share what I learned yesterday while talking to a local plastics expert. I asked for advice on restoring the polystyrene panels, and what my options were, 'cause I don't know what I don't know. Probably a lot of this is already known, but in case it's not, here's we discussed.
He said that there's no restoring polystyrene. Unlike rubber, which can be restored to its rubbery state (we used to do this to printer platens back in the dot matrix days) polystyrene will either decay, or not, but it can't be un-decayed. At 30 years of age the Cyber Lead side panels will be expressing all the butadiene rubber that's used as a copolymer to make the polystyrene less fragile, and that's why they're turning brown. Like an elastic band, the rubber breaks down. I told him that the theory in the console world was that it was anti-flame iodine rising to the surface, like in a Super Nintendo, and he thought that was an interesting but incorrect theory.
He said that the panels will be fairly porous after thirty years, at least on the surface, and should readily take a coat of paint without much preparation. Water based is good, solvent based will probably melt the polystyrene in a hurry, so test that before going all in. The paint will prevent UV light from hitting the panels and making the degradation worse, but the process can be slowed or stopped, not reversed.
And UV, he said, was the enemy of these things. Any amount of sunlight will speed up the polystyrene breakdown process. Paint will block the light fairly well, but still, keep them out of the sun as a rule.
For repair, any similar plastic, like ABS, will do as a patch, and non-solvent-based fillers like automobile filler will fill gaps nicely. For glue, your standard superglue (cyanoacrylate) is the stuff to use.
And finally, he said that his company can make replacement panels if that's absolutely necessary, but that you wouldn't see much change from $2k AUD for two, and depending on what they find when getting into it, it may cost more than that.
So yeah, I'll be repairing and painting mine before I try making new ones. ^__^
I'm not the first and I won't be the last, but I thought I'd share what I learned yesterday while talking to a local plastics expert. I asked for advice on restoring the polystyrene panels, and what my options were, 'cause I don't know what I don't know. Probably a lot of this is already known, but in case it's not, here's we discussed.
He said that there's no restoring polystyrene. Unlike rubber, which can be restored to its rubbery state (we used to do this to printer platens back in the dot matrix days) polystyrene will either decay, or not, but it can't be un-decayed. At 30 years of age the Cyber Lead side panels will be expressing all the butadiene rubber that's used as a copolymer to make the polystyrene less fragile, and that's why they're turning brown. Like an elastic band, the rubber breaks down. I told him that the theory in the console world was that it was anti-flame iodine rising to the surface, like in a Super Nintendo, and he thought that was an interesting but incorrect theory.
He said that the panels will be fairly porous after thirty years, at least on the surface, and should readily take a coat of paint without much preparation. Water based is good, solvent based will probably melt the polystyrene in a hurry, so test that before going all in. The paint will prevent UV light from hitting the panels and making the degradation worse, but the process can be slowed or stopped, not reversed.
And UV, he said, was the enemy of these things. Any amount of sunlight will speed up the polystyrene breakdown process. Paint will block the light fairly well, but still, keep them out of the sun as a rule.
For repair, any similar plastic, like ABS, will do as a patch, and non-solvent-based fillers like automobile filler will fill gaps nicely. For glue, your standard superglue (cyanoacrylate) is the stuff to use.
And finally, he said that his company can make replacement panels if that's absolutely necessary, but that you wouldn't see much change from $2k AUD for two, and depending on what they find when getting into it, it may cost more than that.
So yeah, I'll be repairing and painting mine before I try making new ones. ^__^
