Is the problem age per se or exposure (UV, oxidation, heat, etc.) over
time that one can protect against?
My Sun lunch box and pizza box systems are not exposed to UV or
excessive heat most of the time. Some of them are kept bagged (because
it is very dusty where I live). That should help, right?
alan
On 9/2/20 12:02 PM, Rico Pajarola via cctech 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.
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 9:38 AM Tom Hunter via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Today I was working on a very nice 1995 vintage SPARCstation LX with CDROM
and QIC-150 tape drive (3 lunchbox type units). I was trying to install a
newer version of NetBSD on it than was already installed. The stack of 3
units was stored in a museum grade glass display cabinet. Sadly all 3 units
have a small degree of yellowing but more importantly the plastic cases
have become very brittle and bits just break off with minimal mechanical
strain.
Is there any process to reverse the brittleness which could be used to
preserve the cases?
Thanks
Tom Hunter
