yellowed murky plastic

21 Jun 2005

...

  How do you remove paint from plastic without
damaging the plastic
 itself? Strikes me as being a bit different to getting paint off metal
 or wood, where chemicals aren't going to damage the underlying
 surface...  
 Some of the new environmentally safe strippers are pretty safe for
 plastic. 
That strikes me as being a pretty meaningless statement!. There are 
dozens of different plastics, what is safe for one may not be safe for 
another (as a trivial example, propanone (acetone) attacks many common 
plastics, but AFAIK it doesn't attack PTFE). 

There is a second problem, though. The stripper may appear safe when you 
use it, but may cause chemical changes in the plastic that make it go 
very brittle, or something like that. I've seen a similar effect with 
mineral oils on certain plastics. Seems OK for a bit, then it all starts 
to fall apart.

-tony

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yellowed murky plastic