Building a new Retrobrighting rig (and spending way too much money) 

This video will be the perfect alibi when the feds show up. Good work!

I built a low-cost version of this setup, earlier in the summer (UK). The 'chamber' is a 22 Watt Electric Propogator (£33 from Amazon) - inspired by RMC - The Cave. I put this in a cardboard box, lined with cooking foil to reflect the light, which is supplied by a 50 Watt UV LED Lamp (also £33 on Amazon), shining through a hole in the lid of the box (inspired by Jan Beta). It's relatively low power, so it can take 24 hours to Retrobrite a case, using 12% peroxide, but that just means I am less likely to ruin a case! It only cost me 66 GBP plus a bit of effort. I am very happy with the results.

Hello from Sheffield UK. Great T-Shirt Mr Lurch.

Glad to see the method worked for you and fun to see what a larger budget does for a set up :) Heat & UV helps the process but it isn't strictly essential if using unstable hydrogen peroxide - just affects the speed. Same goes for Hydrogen Peroxide strength; I found 12% was more than adequate for the price. You should find repeated exposure doesn't cause de-yellowed areas to go beyond their original shade (unless pigmentation breakdown has occurred before this process - which can happen with certain plastics). So if you have an area or edge that isn't uniform due to it being severely affected, just repeat the process again until you're happy. Areas coated in any oils (human skin etc) need to be cleaned with a suitable and plastic safe cleaning product first (e.g. Datsy Professional).

There's something to be said for paying retail at a knowledgeable shop. It's too rare these days that we have that opportunity.

I have a UV light from an aquarium I intend to try. Then with an aquarium heater...maybe. On the other hand, I may just spray them a different colour!

While UV+heat might work best, I got very good results just using heat. Smaler parts like keykaps, cases from PSU, mice etc. I simply put in a smal closed box filled with H2O2 (12%) and put it in the oven at 70°C for about 3h in the kitchen in the convection oven. It works like a charm. Even very yellow parts get quite good - maybe after doing brighting twice. For keycaps there is one problem: They are often padprinted. H2O2 tends to degrade the protective layer - and letters literaly might swim away after second pass of retrobrighting. So make sure to highres scan keyboards before, so you can relable keycaps afterwards using dyesub method. The big problem is size of the oven. An Amiga 500 case simply does not fit. But 65...70°C might be reached also inside a well insolated box heating a water bath with a sealed box with H2O2 inside. The H2O2 totaly degrades to H20 and O2/O3 in the process over 3h. So if retrobrighting is not finished in this time, you have to replace the H2O2. Also no harm or contamination of the kitchen oven occurs. Of course O3 might result in the process, wich is not healty to breath (but degrades to O2 after time). So I do the retrobrighting only in a well ventilated kitchen.

Sorry to hear the headache. And the Uggs :)

Cool. I think I’ll try something similar

Now that we know the concept is sound, it would be interesting to see how to optimize the costs. Maybe as a collaboration with another RU-vidr who still needs a retrobrighting solution. For example, maybe one could use a couple of those cheap PTC heating elements from Aliexpress. They run at a fixed temperature, so no thermostat required. Maybe the tent could be replaced with a cardboard box lined with aluminium foil. That sort of thing.

53/2=26.5, but nice to see you're very exacting in your methods!

Just exposing the microbee to outdoor sunlight yields great results.

11:49 Nice JoergSprave impersonation :)

15:26 in Europe to legally buy 51% peroxide you must sign up a disclaimer that you will not use it to make some explosives ;)

That Microbee definitely looking like it had serious Hepatitus. Amazing results reversing the oranging. I recall using a Microbee in high school ~1985-86, they were linked to a main server with a 20Mb hard disk, and run CPM, probably my first experience with Spreadsheets and Word Processing.

I retro brighted some Super Nintendos in my electrical kitchen oven and a roaster. Used 3% H2O2 solution and set the oven to 50 deg Celsius (validate temperature with a thermometer) and left it running 1-2 nights (adding some H2O2 in between). That usually worked well although it took longer. No UV required in this case. The UV creates activated oxygen and possibly free radicals and might speed things up but you can generate this stuff also thermally. You just need to make sure your plastic isn’t melting and 50 deg Celsius is a practical safety limit.

Excellent work! The vapour method does appear to work very well. I'm thinking the combination of heat and UV together with the sealed chamber makes for a nice rich ozone environment which is what helps this along. I did build something similar with a wooden box, brushed aluminium and a couple of UV CFL lamps (meant for reptile enclosures) and it does work as a "sunbrighting rig", but now I want to add the heat tray as well.

I have a low tech version of that - I use one of the heat mats like your original one, but it has a wired thermocouple I can put into the plastic box with the peroxide to control the liquid temperature. For insulation I use an old fleece blanket. It can keep the system at 40C without a problem. I need to try it with vapor, your results look excellent.

I've had good results with a similar setup but this year the sun made an unexpected trip to the U.K., I just left a badly yellowed Eaca Video Genie (Dick Smith System 80) out in the sun for the afternoon, no chemicals and it came out looking brand new.

Great video. I'd like to see someone test which wavelengths are most effective for retrobrighting. The market seems to be flooded with these portable "phone sanitiser" since the you-know-what, and now shops are trying to dump them. Some have near UV LEDs in them, while some have proper UV-C tubes in them which will erase an EPROM. These devices could be a cheap resource for lamps once we know what type of UV is involved.

Stay safe everyone

Lurch, maybe you could setup a retrobrighting mail-in business to recoup some of the expense?? might be an idea.. :)

Really nice! Some seem to think the sun is the best, but I never really got that, this is way more practical. I do think you could've saved a ton of money, by just finding an enclosure tent or something, covering it with alu-foil etc. :)

I live in the UK. What’s the sun!

Big thanks for sharing! Very expensive unless you will be offering to do the same of others and charge for the retrobrighting.

Wow it's a microbee... Cool..

Looks like a scene from Breaking Bad

For those of us using the cream & sunlight method, I have this suggestion to avoid the streaking / marbling that can sometimes result if you just wrap the piece directly in cling wrap. I created a sort of Sun Tent using a large square of clear plastic film (think "High-Density Plastic Painters Sheeting" which is clear polyethylene sheeting that painters and renovators use lots of). I set up a table outside on a sunny day, stand a few tall items on the table to act as the tentpoles, then drape a big piece of the plastic sheeting over it. A number of small heavy objects (pebbles are good) to weight down the sheet around the edge of the table to keep out the breeze and let the greenhouse effect warm up the air inside and retain some humidity. I also placed a couple of open containers of water to increase the humidity (stops the gel from drying out too quickly). Then I brush the peroxide gel thinly and evenly onto the piece and pop it in the tent for a few hours. Because the plastic does not touch the piece, the retro-briting effect is even and completely satisfactory! This was a very cheap and easy setup and I've been very happy with the results obtained so far.

The peroxide goes down the sink regardless of using for hair or retrobrighting so it must be okay?

I know it is late now, but you should have linked to all of this stuff you bought for this project... you could have also done Amazon affiliate links and made a few cents over the past 2 years. Are you still using the vapor system, or did you go back to one of the others?

Very cool to see this approach. While expensive, it would seem it is effective, controllable, and hence, repeatable. What was the main reason for not simply putting the chamber outside in the abundance of free Australian sun?

Would a small fan help to circulate the vapor and improve the results like on those side which dont get much UV?

Now you can grow weed as well :) win win!

Love it was almost live a series out of Breaking Bad... Jokes aside this looks like the better way by far as RMC did this method as well.

This is really neat! How hot does it get in there with that lamp blasting away at 1200 watts though?

I use that for tomatos.

Good stuff! Really appreciate the effort gone to here. You may also want to check out "The truth about Retr0brite - busting myths with science…" on the Hey Birt channel. Good methodical tests and also some scientific info on why plastics yellow. Hint, it's not bromine.

dat shirt

First? The vapor is a novel idea. I wonder what Adrian Black's thoughts are on this method.