After storing my headset for a while, the plastic on the control panel starts to get unpleasantly sticky. Mineral spirits and Orange Terpene (Ersolin) didn‘t work sufficiently. Nail polish remover works a little better but also removes the stickers. Does anyone have a better suggestion?
Probably a disintegrating rubber coating. It does not have a glue layer bonding it to the underlying hard plastic, but the material itself sticks to the plastic, making it difficult to remove.
IME rubbing alcohol (isopropanol/isopropyl alcohol) works best but still needs a fair amount of rubbing since it primarily prevents readhesion of the rubber. it does not actually dissolve it as such. Ethanol / methylated spirit also works ok.
Acetone is bad as it also does not dissolve the rubber but is likely to damage the plastic itself.
Rubber is tenacious stuff, most chemicals damage it in the long term but it is hard to breK down quickly.
If you can still get hold of it, you could try “terabenthyne”. I used to use it a lot for cleaning film and editing equipment, but I haven’t bought it for a long while now.
I remove that stuff with IPA (isopropyl alcohol). It takes a bit of work but comes off.
That horrible coating was fashionable on laptops etc about 10 years ago and it goes sticky and falls apart.
If it’s really rubber, the best stuff is Bestine glue thinner. Available in any craft store in the US, but I can’t find it in Europe – undoubtedly banned. It’s just heptane, which in theory you can get from any industrial chemical supplier – though on Amazon I could only find it in 1000 litre drums, which is probably more than you’ll need.
I used acetone on mine.
IME rubbing alcohol (isopropanol/isopropyl alcohol) works best but still needs a fair amount of rubbing since it primarily prevents readhesion of the rubber. it does not actually dissolve it as such.
This is the most commonly recommended approach for completely removing the coating on older Lightspeeds that have it (I see your logo). There are long threads on the issue on some forums. Lightspeed dropped the coating on newer ones.
