Rubberised coating degradation due to high humidity

[zoltan87]

I am quite devastated. I have had a brand new Thinkpad T60 lid in storage for a couple of years. I bought it a few years ago brand new, in perfect condition, and I was planning to use it for a Frankenpad build. I was trying to source pristine parts, so that I could build up a machine that would have been in virtually brand new condition.

I have moved last summer to a new house, and during the winter I noticed the extremely high air humidity in many rooms, especially in the one I was storing all sorts of things. So sometimes in december I got a dehumidifier that solved that issue. Apparently that was too late, because even those previous few months were enough to sort of ruin the rubberised coating on multiple thinkpads I kept in that room. Here is a link to a few pictures, so you know what I am talking about:

https://imgur.com/a/cyPHbh3

You can see those rough looking spots and blotches on the lids, none of those were there last summer, when I last inspected these machines. I am quite devastated about this. The humidity when it was high was in the 80% plus region. And that level of humidity for about 3 - 4 months was enough to result in this look you can observe on the pictures. I am so frustrated. I will try to use a magic eraser sometime, hopefully it's just a surface thing, and can be (mostly) removed, but time will tell.

So I think the conclusion to the dreaded rubberised lid degradation is that one of the major reason it occurs is high humidity. Probably there are other factors in play too, but in my case these lids were perfectly clean, no finger grease or anything like that on them, they were not touching anything else while in storage. It must have been the humidity in my case. So hopefully this will help some of you out, and will be more mindful about this factor while storing your units. These lids for the older models are very difficult to source nowadays in good condition, and brand new almost impossible, so it's a major lesson I have just learned unfortunately the hard way.

[WarhawkCZ]

The rubberized coating gets gnarly over time. Some models suffer more, some less. I absolutely hate it. Additionally, Lenovo decided it to use it everywhere oven on the palmrest.

[zoltan87]

The rubberized coating gets gnarly over time. Some models suffer more, some less. I absolutely hate it. Additionally, Lenovo decided it to use it everywhere oven on the palmrest.

I have had issues with earlier models, like the T2x series or the ones even before these, but always found that the coating material has changed from somewhere arount the T4x series onwards, and it became much more resilient to degradation. The dreaded stickiness has never happened on any of my mentioned newer machines. Well it turns out that even the improved coating can degrade, even if not the same way like the old one.

I actually really like the feeling of this material, I just wish it was more durable. It definitely shouldn't be used on the palmrest like on some machines, it's simply won't hold up to constant friction and contact to our palms.

[WarhawkCZ]

I can literally glue my palm on X301. Just recently I saw a video with tips for a chemical that removes it. The guy was using it for restoring an old Mercedes Benz dashboard.
The material gets also dirty, especially palmrests are ugly when soaking all natural oils that most humans emit.

[dr_st]

Apparently, it is not that coating in general has become better or worse. It is just that there are different materials and some degrade faster/worse than others, but all are still used even on modern products. I expect manufacturers pick the most cost-efficient/available material at the time of production, and don't care much how it looks in 5 years, when the product is deemed past its useful life cycle.

I never owned any rubber-coating Thinkpad made before 2005, so I don't know how the coating behaves there. On my T42, X32, T60 - it has degraded enough to show visible scratches, nicks and local patches of stickiness, but it has not become a sticky ugly degenerate mess yet. Although the X32 might look like it's heading that way faster than others.

There are two items on which it has gotten to that aforementioned mess state, that the items were physically repulsive to handle - a Logitech F510 Gamepad, and a NetGear N300 (PR2000) travel router (have 3 of these and they are all the same). On the NetGear it seems to happen within 5 years of manufacturing, at most. My F510 I got used, so I don't know how long it took it to get to that state. I had to thoroughly remove the coating from all the surfaces (fortunately the overall surface area was not big).

Both my Thinkpad 25 machines are going to be 6 years old in a few months at most, still no signs of coating degradation on the lid or palmrest. Let's hope it will stay this way for some time.

[ThinkDan]

I've just sold an old LG Windows CE Handheld PC with the worst case of sticky rubber I've seen - it actually looked and felt wet, and picked up even the lightest fingerprint:



It had been left in a soft case for years with the instruction booklet touching it

Tried a few things to wrap it in prior to posting, and found that wrapping it in used sticker-backing sheet from printable A4 label sheets worked a treat, only the tiniest amount of sticky gum residue on the sheet and no obvious adhesion after ten days.

[zoltan87]

I have managed to bring back that T60 lid to its original condition with about 5 minutes of magic eraser scrubbing. Huge relief. Unfortunately I tried the same thing on a few other laptop lids, that were in worse condition (not just spots on the lids, but actual wear, smooth oily looking spots, scratches) and I had less success there. The condition somewhat improved in every case, but I wasn't able to remove all those blemishes, or indeed even these mould looking spots.

Maybe I just need to be more persistent, and do it a lot longer, but I only had 2 of those magic eraser pads, and they all crumbled into pieces, so I will need to get some more, and do it again in the future.

[dr_st]

I have managed to bring back that T60 lid to its original condition with about 5 minutes of magic eraser scrubbing. Huge relief.

That's interesting. I should try it. How can it bring the lid to its original condition? I understand that magic eraser removes a layer. Were your lid imperfections mostly stuff that stuck to the lid?

[zoltan87]

That's interesting. I should try it. How can it bring the lid to its original condition? I understand that magic eraser removes a layer. Were your lid imperfections mostly stuff that stuck to the lid?

That's correct, it removes stuff. That T60 lid it managed to clean up apparently had that slightly roughened up texture on the surface level only. I am not quite sure if it was mould on it or what, but it completely cleaned up. It really looks brand new now. But I think this trick will be much less effective with actual scratches and damages to that sort, as for that you would need to remove quite a bit of material to level out the surface. Also for that these magic erasers are just too fragile, they crumble into pieces within minutes. Maybe a polishing wheel could do the job.

[astral]

how well the eraser works does indeed largely depend on the type of damage.
cloudiness, scuffing, works great on that sort of thing. will not fix deep scratches though.
it's made some of my thinkpads look like new again or close, and has done no good on others.

don't use it on anything pre t-series though. they're weak enough at this point that even if they haven't gone sticky yet, it will just start to take it all off.

[thewaywardgeek]

That's interesting. I should try it. How can it bring the lid to its original condition? I understand that magic eraser removes a layer. Were your lid imperfections mostly stuff that stuck to the lid?

That's correct, it removes stuff. That T60 lid it managed to clean up apparently had that slightly roughened up texture on the surface level only. I am not quite sure if it was mould on it or what, but it completely cleaned up. It really looks brand new now. But I think this trick will be much less effective with actual scratches and damages to that sort, as for that you would need to remove quite a bit of material to level out the surface. Also for that these magic erasers are just too fragile, they crumble into pieces within minutes. Maybe a polishing wheel could do the job.

So just to confirm, it removed the "gooey" surface off it, correct? As I was wondering if it's possible to restore it back as I have a lot of accessories that have this stuff that I would like to reclaim it's former glory, if possible.

[astral]

if it’s gooey than it’s too far gone usually.

[thewaywardgeek]

if it’s gooey than it’s too far gone usually.

oh well, probably a coating of elastidip is better.