Retr0bright on a Super Neo 29 type II

LWK

LWK

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Screw repainting, do the retrobright and do it right. I don't like painting because it can bubble and chip, and I especially dislike it when it comes to cab plastics. More so, vinyl dye is worse, since it melts into the plastic creating a bond. If you spray it out of line or incorrectly, that entire piece is ruined.
Also, NO vinyl dye paint's exist in a high gloss, they are a satin finish usually. You also can never color match the existing white. With retrobright I can treat something enough to almost perfectly match it.

I did two treatments on this, and this only shows one treatment.

I think its totally worth it. Fuck streaking worries, just do a good job and apply the gel every few hours in the sun with seran wrap to prevent blooming..

My plastic has its nice finish still. Gonna do two more treatments tomorrow to have it truly white.

Here is the contrast difference picture I took of a single treatment I did. Look at the top part of the cab for a example of how the color looked..

2mrs11h.jpg
 
LWK

LWK

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I was juggling doing this for weeks. Worried I'd wreck it. It didn't do anything but a great job. This right here was my idea around the town retr0bright was stumbled upon. I thought 'hey, can't we restore candy's with the same method'

This means you can keep your entire cabinet stock, reverse the clock on the aging process and have a near mint looking example if you do it right. Its much more worth it to me to do this and cover it in varnish or armor all then to repaint it with some crappy vinyl dye and have a burnt out flat look. The aspect that makes this cabinet so classy is its glossy plastics.
 
complexz

complexz

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nice man I was thinking about using some of that stuff to make my super famicom grey again, shit is practically orange now.
 
Tango

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So you used Saran wrap? Do you put it on pretty thin and slowly work it in or do you apply it thick, let it sit and wipe the excess off? In either case, looks really good man. Way to bring that bitch back to its former glory.
 
LWK

LWK

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I used seran wrap, 40 volume creme developer from sally's.

I bought some 20 volume liquid developer to test.. Its basically hydrogen peroxide. I did my mix with corn starch. I didn't measure anything, just chalked it until it was right. At the end you add a little oxy clean booster, and I mean a little will do the job. Don't overkill. Stir this stuff up. Before I did anything, I heated the peroxide for 20 seconds, added corn starch, then stirred. It wasn't gelly enough, so I added more. My last make was a bigger application.

I applied pretty thin, but I'll be doing a overnight UV experiment.

I started my tests on a super famicom and other things. I've noticed that whiter pieces seemed to reverse much better and faster then grey pieces. I may be wroong about this though. I submitted this job to merlin, who's one of the creators, if he registers here, he'd be a real help as hes a expert on this stuff.
 
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HDRchampion

HDRchampion

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Nice work, you should do a step by step w/ pictures. Where do you get this stuff & how much was the total for the project?
 
Mike26

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this is awesome! I watched a thread over on arcade-museum i think it was where a guy tried retrobrite on his star trek captains chair plastics as part of his restore. He used a thick batch and applied it with a foam brush uneven and left it for 2 days. The streaks that were left behind looked like crap. That made me kind of nervous about applying this stuff incorrectly and the adverse effects of not planning and testing and just rushing through it.

One question, Do you think retrobrite would work on other colors, EG a purple colored plastic side panel from a namco cyberlead? or is this stuff made to work on yellowed back to white plastics?
 
LWK

LWK

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I don't treat anything for days. I do hours, and even then I did extensive testing first. You need to coat it with seran wrap because it prevents the gel from drying out. If it does dry out, what happens is that the gel itself attacks the ABS of the plastic. To prevent this, wrap it up. I try and get the gel on sort of thick, but I did a thin job on this. I do about 2 hour treatments at max in sunlight, and I monitor it then. I'm testing 20 volume liquid developer right now on both parts. The top marquee holder is reversing also, and is also a sort of darker cream. Not yellow.

I think retrobright works on other colors actually. Its not about color.

I'm gonna test some on my debugging playstation. Under a sticker I pulled, you can see its a different hue. Meaning a bromine yellow-fest happened right over the blue color.. -__-
 
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LWK

LWK

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Retr0bright said:
Hi everyone, this is Merlin from the Retr0bright Wiki (I couldn't use the name Merlin as it was already taken )

LWK is bang on target with his comments. Keep the strength of the peroxide at around 10%, use a tiny amount of Oxy, gel it with corn starch, wallpaper paste or a starchy thickener then wrap it in clear plastic wrap (I think it's called Saran Wrap in the US). The plastic film stops the gel from drying out and sending the peroxide strength above 10%. Alternatively, you can do it indoors with a blacklight bulb.

The key to it all is time. Patience is needed in spades and you need to keep checking the parts to prevent them from being overdone. LWK is right when he says hours as that is all it takes due to the 'go-faster stripes' ingredient in the Oxy.

Colour (sorry, I'm British ) is not that critical as red, blue, grey and even clear parts have been restored with Retr0bright - the Lego community love it, as it has restored some prized collectable kits. Star Wars stormtroopers (the toys and the life-size helmets), Transformer toys, the list goes on and on.....

I have to congratulate LWK on having the courage to take a leap of faith and try it. I spent a LOT of time in 2008 and early 2009 working on the theory and background to this and discovering what was the root cause (Hell, even Nintendo didn't know what it was that made Super Nintendos go yellow, but we found the root cause ). I have always been a frustrated inventor and my industrial chemistry background was intrigued by this, so I wanted to see it through.

Read the Wiki through, follow the instructions carefully and have lots of patience and you will be rewarded. It took years for this plastic to go yellow, so a few more hours won't hurt.

If you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them.
Click to expand...

Reposting Merlin's post. Apparently we had a server issue which deleted a lot of things accidentally.
 
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