Yellowed ABS

[Aussie Mike]

Gday

 

I was wondering if anyone has had this happen and if there is a method to bleach the effected area

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see the strip of ABS down the front of the legs has gone a bone colour, while the rest of the armour is still pure white.

 

 

Any advice is appreciated

 

I have tried Meguiars PlastX but it didnt work (did wonders for the cars headlights though)

[Tolo[TK]]

Wow, that's weird. The strips are from the same maker as the armor?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

[Aussie Mike]

Yeah, all from the same kit. Just bad luck i guess.

I thought it might have been the plumbers cement but none of the other joins have discoloured, and digging out my off cuts i can see that the sheet these were cut from has gone the same colour.

 

Its not a big deal, i still walk out into the lounge look at my armour and think to myself how freakin lucky am i to own such a wonderful thing. Its still a vast improvement on the papier mache and cardboard set i bulit in 1978 lol.

 

I was hoping this had happened to others and a fix had been found. If worse comes to worst i can remove them and replace them with fresh plastic. but if there is a bleaching process that works id rather try that

[pattrooper]

would it be possible to paint?

[T-Jay[TK]]

Yellowing plastic is a point, which I am very concerned about at TK armors. Fortunately it only appears on the covers stripes and no vac-formed armor parts.

 

In your case it seems like the maker had used some different kind of plastic sheet to make these cover stripes from. That is the only explanation for having nothing else gone yellowing.

 

If your able to remove the affected stripes, you could replace them with new ones. If you can't removed them, I would stick with Patrick's plan and paint them - although finding an exactly matching color might become a problem...

[Mcott65[TK]]

http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29002-how-to-reverse-uv-damage-on-armor/

This thread might be worth a look.

[Aussie Mike]

http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29002-how-to-reverse-uv-damage-on-armor/

This thread might be worth a look.

 

Thank you that looks promising.

 

Yesterday i took some fine sandpaper to the spare bit of sheeting, and sure enough it cleaned up back to a white colour , But it took the shine off the plastic.

 

I will experiment with the finest grade wet and dry i can find and the PlastX as a cutting compound and that may work too, failing that the link provided offers some great advice too

 

Cheers guys much appreciated

[Aussie Mike]

I figured it was wise to check first and see if anyone had a tried and tested method, and certainly the instructables one looks great.

 

But before i made that mix, i decided to try a few things on a scrap of the same plastic

 

And bingo where the PlastX didnt work this did
 

 

Before

 

 

After

 

 

 

If you compare these side by side the improvement is obvious. I hope this will be helpful to others

[Artshot]

I wonder if something about the plastic being heated then the body parts being stretched over the mold has made them less likely to yellow, maybe it's a scientific answer involving changing it's properties.

 

Good job on getting some of the original colour back.

[Whiteley.m]

I don't know if this will help but last year I restored some yellowed Lego bricks that were once white by submerging them in hydrogen peroxide and projecting UV light onto it. After a few days the bricks were as good as new, you couldn't tell the difference from brand new ones.

Edited August 11, 2015 by Whiteley.m