Removing Soft Touch Rubberised Coating From Modern Devices 

Sorry the music gets a wee bit loud in this one - thanks to @andrewlittleboy8532 for pointing it out! NOTE: I also used a bit of WD-40 at various points - it's a solvent, but worked well here and didn't affect the plastic. The point there about "fringe patterns" obviously only relates to hard disks or floppy etc. Solid state storage these days won't have that issue - but the data may still be there when a file is deleted, unless a full format is done.

Anyone who specifies that their product be treated with non-slip coatings needs to answer for their crimes in The Hague.

Crazy that that rubberized coating is still being used, laptops, even my Pioneer record decks - horrible stuff.

I'm glad this garbage soft touch coating is finally getting some coverage. This stuff has been in use at least since the early 2000s and has been terrible for at least a decade, but no one ever covered how to deal with it till just recently. I am hoping we will come up with better solutions for stripping this stuff off our old devices. Hopefully manufacturers will take note that no one wants this crap on their devices, and people will realize they don't want to buy devices with this stuff on it either!

IPA is often touted as being good for removing this gunk. I have used it too, but the best thing I have used is White Spirit (paintbrush cleaner). Nikon coated their DSLRs in this and Remington's hair clippers and I've had a few USB pen drives with it on. However, White Spirit literally wipes on and off bringing the crap with it. No rubbing. White Spirit is better than IPA for removing label glue - though to some extent that depends on the composition.

ABS plastic will dissolve in acetone. It's a trick in 3D printing circles to use the fumes from acetone will smooth the layer lines in 3D printed ABS.

That material is an absolute crime. I bought a no-name electric toothbrush off Amazon and within a few months the rubberised coating was getting sticky and horrible. Binned.

I completely agree with you about that rubberised coating, you should see the state of my Pure One Classic, and my BopIt XT, both have that rubberised coating on them, they're both turning sticky and disgusting, particularly the digital radio, so now I can't use it without that sticky stuff getting all over everything, it's repulsive.

This is going to be great, I hate the trend in these weird rubberized nonsense, gets so sticky and gross then don't know what to clean it with.

What I found to work pretty well for these horrible coating on devices is to. Depending on the size of the device, put it into a tub and fill up with IPA and leave it to sit for a hour. Then you can use a simple plastic spudger or safety razor blades to scrape off the coating. And I'll spray some coats of clear lacquer on some items to keep the plastic safe from further wearing down from use. Worked great on my old X-55 hotas. Can then use coffee fllter and a bottle to retain the IPA for multiple uses before needing to get rid of it.

I saved a Thinkpad x200 from an e-waste bin, but the back of the lid was covered in this goo. It was a tougher composition than normal though - IPA, acetone, even a wire wheel on my drill wouldn't remove it. What finally worked and allowed me to strip it down to bare metal was coating it in Naval Jelly and letting it sit overnight. Then I spray painted it matte black, and it still looks great!

This is perfect! I have a couple old but still very usable Dell Latitude laptops, and the rubber coating around the keyboard is disintegrating on one of them (the other's not too bad... yet). I can now get that crap off without the manual scraping like I was doing. Thank you!!!

For a quick and easy 'bodge', lightly dust the surface with talcum powder. Make sure it doesn't go into places it shouldn't!

I've just finished restoring my old Cyborg RAT 9 mouse, it had one of these rubberised coatings that had gone all gross and sticky, it took a good while to clean it all off, nasty stuff.

I’ve found that jelled alcohol based hand sanitizer takes that stuff off like a champ. Saved a few mice and a camera from the bin with it and a magic eraser.

I've successfully removed this junk from a couple Microsoft Wireless Keyboard 6000 models with Goo Gone, followed by an IPA cleaning. Using a thick cleaning cloth helps with the Goo Gone.

Nicely done. I had a wireless version of that keyboard with the trackpad, used it with my HTPC many years ago. Like yours mine felt like it was melting but I just binned it. Bit of a shame I suppose cause it probably could have been cleaned up but noted for future.

Nice job, quite a transformation to the better :) Found once from flea market a flaslight which had this kind of sticky coating, and indeed ipa worked wonders on that. I've got external usb keyboard (Trust brand) from November 2022 connected to my laptop, and already the A key and the Scandinavian Ä -key letters have worn almost completely off. They don't make them like they used to, my Amiga 500 keyboard for example still has all letters intact, and so does my 2001 HP Brio PC. My laptop integrated keyboard started malfunctioning, the T-key stopped working, nothing happens when it pressed, but on the other hand, sometimes it has malfunctioned the other way, taking contact or "shorting" somewhere on it's own, so that's why had to buy external keyboard. Removed the key cap but couldn't see what's wrong, probably requires complete disassembly of the computer to gain access to the keyboard, and besides, new integrated keyboard is much more expensive than this external keyboard. Doesn't fix the "ghost" press problem though, luckily that failure mode happens extremely rarely and goes away when I hit that key.

I jad a wacom drawing tablet where the pen is coated in this. (Was a cheap bamboo... The more expensive ones have actual rubber coatings which don't degrade) Even something as small as that took ages to clean the goop off...

I've not tried to remove this specific stuff, but I have removed a lot of sticky stuff. I think stuff like Goo-gone works way better than iso. Goo-gone uses like orange peels or something in it. So its oily and acidic I think. It's great.

I remember so many customers returning Pure radio’s covered in this muck. As many have said it’s criminal that this is still being used.

I often find that white spirit breaks down such goop when isoprop fails - then finish of last with a quick isoprop cleanup to make the surface look even.

Nice job! I bought a BitFenix prodigy case years ago now. It was white and the whole thing was covered in that soft-feel plastic. After about 3 years the entire case was a sticky smeary mess covered in dust and cat hair. I ended up taking everything out then completely disassembling the whole thing and cleaning every panel and piece separately. I found 'sticky stuff remover' - whatever that contains - broke down the goo then washing up liquid would wash it away. Afterwards the case was just gloss white plastic, but was fine. I agree that soft plastic coating is an abomination.

0:13 It's the other way around today. Manufacturers don't make crappy products because they think we want it. They make crappy products and bend their customers into wanting them.

I found that the cheap olive oil that contains the olive pip oil (very low grade) actually works best not only on the sticky degraded rubber, but also on leftover glue from stickers. It appears that something in the oil acts like a solvent. Since olive oil is water based, any soap quickly removes any residue. You need to leave the oil on it for a while to let it dissolve it well.

A friend GAVE me his old Alienware m14x laptop because the soft touch paint had turned into something akin to glue. The thing was so sticky that it would fight you while you tried to get it out of the laptop bag, and it felt alarmingly "Unhygienic" to handle. I didn't even bother to dismantle it, I just put it in a large plastic container, sprayed it with IPA until it looked wet, then left it for 10 minutes. When I came back I scraped about 90% of the gunk off of it with a spare loyalty card (Great as free scrapers/spreaders. I pick up a couple whenever I see them anywhere. :) ), then wet it's surface again and rubbed the rest off with an old microfiber cloth. The plastic underneath looks absolutely perfect, and the laptop now looks new. So I got a still pretty reasonable spec laptop for the cost of about 100ml of IPA and a bit of light elbow grease........ I'll take that as a win ! :D The things since had it's 6gb of memory swapped for a couple of 8gb sticks, it's 500gb HDD replaced with a 1tb SSD, and it's optical drive yanked in favour of an adapter that holds a 2tb 2.5" HDD. The last thing I want to do is refresh the thermal paste on the CPU, but that's a mainboard out job to get to the damn thing, and as it's only running a little hotter than standard I've not been inconvenienced enough by thermal throttling to warrant the aggro of doing this.

Great video ... my mum's Dell laptop has this icky stuff ... Now i know how to get rid of it ... many thanks

I have had great success with using an Ammonia based degreaser from Zep. I would recommend wearing a mask and/or well ventilated workspace as it's basically super concentrated glass cleaner.

I have a DJ mixer and a pair of Pioneer headphones that have the rubber coating that is breaking down and getting sticky. Storing these in my hot van has really made these items a pain to use now.

To avoid the "fingerprint magnet" qualities of the underlying plastic, spray a few coats of flat black Rustoleum for plastic. Good ole' rattle can.

I have been using "magic eraser" for cleanup projects like this one, my harmony remote was a sticky mess until recently, also cleaned grout on my kitchen floor using these sponges, any dirt on walls, plastic scratch marks, plenty of scenarios where magic eraser comes in handy, amazing product imho

I have a Bluetooth keyboard I never really used that has the rubberized coating that when I opened it up was all sticky and I was wondering how to fix it. I hadn’t thought about just trying isopropyl alcohol to remove the crappy coating, so I guess I’ll try that. I was just going to put tape over the sticky coating.

The number of times I've bought or found devices with data on, literally not even reset or formatted. And yes, I have tried file recovery on SD cards that come with cameras. Never really found anything bad and don't make a habit of doing it, but it just goes to show how easy it is.

If I'm looking at what I think I am looking at . Arm & Hammer Toothpaste ( the one with the Baking Soda in it ).. spread it on and rub it into the surface until it covers the entire area. Leave it on for about and hour or so and then clean off.. Has always worked for me.

I absolutely HATE butyl rubberised coatings. I have a few synths and certain brands LOVe to use this stuff and it's a pain in the arse to get it off of their knobs and sliders. I've been using high percentage isoprop for some time and it's great, but when you have knobs or something a bit more fiddly it's still damned hard to get it all off. You're right - it should be banned as it really serves no purpose and always degrades quickly.

I have done this a few times. The last time was on a set of JBL speakers. I tried all kinds of remedies. I'm from Denmark, and here we have a product called "rensebenzin". I don't know what it's called in English... benzene? benzine? Naphta? It was very effective, fast and gentle on the plastic.

I've successfully used alcohol based hand sanitising gel, to remove the sticky residue - it has the advantage you can wipe it on, and leave it for a few minutes to release the stickiness from the hard plastic as it doesn't evaporate as quickly as normal IPA.

Hi Gadget a lot quicker way of removing the coating is to use Wonder Wipes Multi Use by Everbuild a tub of wipes cleans hands,tools,sealant,oil&grease and most sticky stuff. I originally got them to remove any spray foam you might get on your hands and the the van gear lever knob got sticky,then the gaming mouse a 101 ways to clean things i now buy them in six packs also Anti Bacterial. (NOTE NEVER USE ON FACE) OMG IT STINGS :)

If you have the Rubber Coat on anything that has painted on lettering like radios or cameras, you can should use Lighter Fluid which does not remove the lettering! It does takes longer with more rubbing to remove the Rubber Coat though!

If I recall correctly Trust used to make keyboards with those keys. Maybe you could find a cheap old one online and salvage the keys to fix the second keyboard. Unless you find decent transparent decals.

I had a snowboarding helmet that went like that. Nothing worse than a sticky helmet. 🤣I threw it out because I thought the integrity of the plastic shell was compromised. I guess I should have polished it. BOOM BOOM.

It could be that I don't buy a lot of new electronics, but I haven't encountered that rubberized coating since the 2000s. I have a 20 year old portable flat screen TV from the 2000s that had that crap. I used fingernail polish remover on it, and it didn't harm the plastic. It does have acetone in it as well as moisturizers and such. I don't know if that makes it less harmful to plastic or the type of plastic just wasn't reactive to acetone. It didn't damage the lettering, the nylon buttons, or the screen. I cleaned the rest off with IPA. I mostly have the radio for power outages due to severe weather. I've even replaced the battery. It make not work in the next few years. They're cramming this new DRM standard down our throats in the United States that will require the Internet to decrypt the signal. It's complete BS.

I swear the stuff they use on ThinkPads lasts a long time compared to any other rubberized coating I know of. I'm convinced it's a literal rubber coating, it's noticeably thicker compared to spots that have worn away.

Had this on my old razer keyboard, had strip the thing down & to do every key individually, i found Cream cleaner (cheap supermarket ) to be most efficient !

The reason these start melting is the same reason why rubber becomes brittle, which is lack of moisture. A way to prevent that from happening without having to use the device is periodically apply a bit of oil, detergent or silicone on the coating and let it dry naturally.

I've been wondering what effect, if any, the ultrasonic would have on that goo. Did anyone try?

Here in the US, to easily get rid of the rubberized nightmare off of devices, I buy small packages of women's makeup remover pads. It comes off without so much scrubbing. I have even used it to remove the sticky horror off of my stargazing binoculars. Try it if you don't believe me.

Will that stickiness return over time ?

I HATE that rubberized coating. I've had to remove it from a few mice, including a RAT7 gaming mouse that I found in the trash, and an SD card reader. Someone once gave me a game controller that was so sticky that you could almost stick it to the wall. I never got around to cleaning that one, mainly because they didn't have the USB adapter for it, so it only works in a true gameport, and the one time I tried it on my old system, the drivers for it slowed everything down by an unacceptable amount. As for getting rid of it, I've tried alcohol, Goo Gone (commercial sticker glue remover), soap, etc. I've actually had the best luck with window cleaner containing ammonia, and a toothbrush. Not that this is a miracle solution, I still have to scrub it, rinse it, apply more, repeat. I can usually get it all off this way though. I also agree that it should be banned.

It’s even more annoying when you clean off all the crap and all the silkscreen comes off as well! Horrible stuff. 😡 Just a friendly comment if I may, the music is a bit loud compared to the talking and probably not needed, I think it would be better without any. I found myself muting the music and then missing the talking. The background music in your older videos and in the Mac SSD upgrade video is much much better. 😊 Good job though and definitely looks much better.

I did exactly the same to exactly that keyboard last year :-)

Most times the cleaning supplies cost more that the item to clean/fix

I had a pair of binoculars with that horrible coating, horrible stuff.

Now imagine that some companies saw that material and decided that it would be perfect for book covers...

I've got a Harmony One remote control. Great remote, except the underside is coated with this crap.

Ferrari used the same stuff on their switchgear for a while - cost their owners thousands - after a few years, replacement parts would come out of the box sticky. LOL My spouse's electric drill had the same crap.

they make coatings that don't turn to goo but this isn't one of them

What game was she playing where she needed to constantly strafe left? :) Great vid, as always.

maybe try and oil silicon oil or light vegetable oil like olive oil, as an example take bit off the done in good dolop oil clean rag cloth rub all ocer the nasty rubbery stuff, and hopefully the stick grit should just life of in the oils, making right mess, then after thet take the hole lot the sink or similar water container and washing Washing Up Liquid, warm water, any should brand should do? may rinse and repeat until desired results

I hear eucalyptus oil or something like that is good at cleaning that gunk

What is the spray used?

I didn't think it would come off so easy! That stuff is in my wife's car on the dash and it is starting to go sticky, really is horrible. Thanks Chris 👍

In Chemistry you get the death sentence for "rubberizing". It's chemically unstable: it decomposes by itself. It dissolves in nothing (not even IPA): the reason some of these methods work is because you're practically scraping it (or a thin layer) off. If some of the rubberized layer remains it either is "lubricated" by the chemicals or something dry sticks to it (the baking soda "trick" does this). The clean and dry layer eventually becomes sticky again. Some rubberized layers come of more easily than others. You may be lucky, you may have bad luck. If you can't take apart the devices then your chemicals get into it. And there are objects (knobs!) that are just to difficult to get a good grip on to rub the stuff off. If a device is rubberized then it's a *deal breaker* for me. There should be a website with warnings about products that still are (partly) rubberized. Some sort of Wall Of Shame.

@20:45 the tracks are not spherical, they are circular, a sphere is a ball!!

A baking powder paste does an excellent job of removing the sticky rubber. Cleaned up a few items with that method.

The soft touch sticky stuff is really crappy. I use 96% alcohol to remove it.

Yes, indeed, utterly horrible garbage. I scraped (peeled really,) and replaced with faux carbon cloth on a laptop. Other laptop is hanging on, but eventually.

The business about overwriting hard drives with seven iterations of random patterns etc really doesn't apply to any modern hard drives made in the last 25 years at least, and it was always theoretical to begin with - the average punter will never get the data back with standard tools. One pass of zeroes is quite adequate. It's more a floppy disc thing really where the drive is much less precise. And the whole thing is nonsense with SSDs of course 😊 Totally agree about this horrible coating - but your ordinary bloke has been conditioned into thinking that it equates to "better built", and so it won't stop unfortunately.

I hate this rubberised mank they insist on smearing over everything. The worst place for this offence in my opinion is in cars, a hard environment that gets scuffed and knocked about. Lots of wear and tear hot and cold. The numbers of times I see a coating peeling off on controls on door panels in cars. It always looks crap. The one and only place I have ever seen a tactile coating actually stay good is on the screen backing of old school Lenovo Thinkpads. With any other coated item it's like you've had 100 kids that have been eating sweets all day have there little mitts all over it.

without a doubt the worst thing in tech

I heard IPA and immediately thought "India Pale Ale"? Then realised 😀

I would suggest gloves when using IPA as it can ruin your skin.

Horrible stuff, my RayBans came with it, scraped it all off and the normal RayBans were revealed underneath. Car switches from cars as expensive as Ferraris had that on in the 2000s

hoping for a killer product, but is not the case unfortunatly

For the nail-biters amongst us, try putting the cleaning tissue around a spudger instead of trying your fingernails.

This type of coating should never have been used! Also used inside cars. The worst invention I know of when it comes to surface treatment of things

get an SSD!, no residual data, impossible to recover, if hardware factory reset

This is on a cheap keyboard, but can you imagine your 200k Maserati sportscar having the same coating on all the interior switches? Removing the coating also removes all the lettering thats on it... Total disaster😂

Use ammonia solution for this rubberized mess. Comes right off.

I have a challenge for you, or anyone else who believes that just wiping/zero filling a drive isn't good enough. I'll send you a drive that's been wiped/zero filled, one pass, and if you can recover ANY useful data from it, I'll give you $1,000, but if you can't, you agree to pay me $10,000. No takers? Why the hesitation? Could it be that recovering data from a wiped drive isn't that easy? OK, so you don't trust me to send you a drive that's only been wiped with a single pass? Here's another challenge: Contact any professional data recovery company. You know, the ones who charge ridiculous amounts of money to recover data from damage hard drives. Tell them that you accidentally zero-filled an important drive and ask them how much it will cost to recover all your important data. Tell them that price is no object, and that you absolutely have to get that data back. See what they say.

EWWWWW...a sticky one... I was told a while back that the reason it goes sticky is that after a while the coating starts to react to the oils in your skin/hands ect ? not sure thats true.... lots of things to try... oil and tar remover for cars.. which i think is just white spirit wd40..the normal stuff or some of the specialist wd40 releasing fluid.. of course IPA...which we know you love.. Chris different sticky stuff .on different plastics Quailty vid.. N x

circular, not spherical. Spheres are three dimensional.

Not gaming related but I have this all over my volkswagen 😂, hideous stuff

I use orange oil for this. Bonus: nice orangy smell

Just put the plastic in the dishwasher with the normal detergent and 75deg C.

You say you are using IPA to remove that rubbercoat? IPA, really? INDIA PALE ALE?

You should be using gloves to keep the chemicals away from your skin. :)

Cracking little keyboards i got one that i went that way with that sticky mess on it had to dismantle and clean it all off

This stuff should be banned. Pretty sure there's way better ways to achieve the same effect.

Damn!!! That keyboard looks like it came from a landfill. 🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮 I wouldn't want to touch that thing, until after a heavy spraying with Lysol.

You are right. It should be banned !