On 9/2/20 12:02 PM, Rico Pajarola via cctalk wrote: > I have a friend who is a Materials Science Technologist and specializes in > injection molded plastics. So... basically the same thing that's in > computer cases (even though he doesn't deal with computer cases). I grilled > him at length on this topic, and he insisted that the brittleness with age > (and UV light) is expected and irreversible. Basically, the plastic > softeners are off-gassing, and there's no way to put them back in. > > I'm still hoping for a happier second opinion, though I'm not holding my > breath. > > In my experience, brittleness varies wildly and goes from "no big deal" to > "crumbles if you blow at it", even for otherwise identical machines. I > recently acquired a Japanese Ultra 1 clone, and the back was smashed in > shipping, and crumbled into a thousand pieces not even large enough to glue > back together. Luckily the front only had a single crack that could be > glued back together.
It's a very well-known problem among the museum conservation crowd--and with no practical solution. For a discussion, WikiPedia is pretty informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_and_restoration_of_plastic_objects The Getty has a few papers on the subject: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/education/cons_plastics/related_mats.html Sadly, there's no good answer, other than making a new duplicate. Apple had some really awful plastics in the 80s that would spontaneously destruct. I doubt that they are alone in that. Give me painted high-density structural foam any day. --Chuck