That’s a creative solution! There has been talk about spray painting PC’s some time ago. I found this topic: Best off the shelf spray paint for beige computer cases . It might help you out in selecting colors 😀.

I've thought about this too - I don't think I'll bother retrobriting my stuff anymore given that it's not permanent and it can't be good for the plastic (or the planet) to dunk it in a tub of toxic chemicals every few years.

My concern is doing a decent job with the paint, I've never had much luck getting a finish I'm happy with. I did a C64 breadbin once that looked OK but they're a pretty rough finish to start with

Not only that, but in the EU peroxide falls under the explosive precursor category since 2021 and it became quite difficult to get anything above 12%. We're just not allowed to have any fun anymore.

Same in Canada. You'll need to import it, or beg a beauty salon to sell you one.
Spray paints have options for the finishes (between matte and gloss). So yeah, it's not easy, and you need to develop the skill to know how to spray and at what angle/distance/move speed.
I sprayed the bezel of a floppy drive with black satin paint to match the computer case's colors... the final result was quite good despite all the mistakes I made.

Painting plastic can be tricky.

In my experience, which is not much and certainly not stuff that needed to look good, just needed to be a different colour, you need to get a good key into the plastic. The whole thing needs scuffing with a wire-wool or wire-brush tool, then priming with a primer for plastics. I think I have had luck too with straight-to-plastic type paints, but I think with a plastic-primer normal spray paint can then be used. And normal paint can be made-up in any colour.

Car repair and that industry's paint can be a good avenue for this, because the paint needs to be flexible, hard wearing, non-fading.... And cars have lots of plastic trim parts, which often need repairs.

Thandor wrote on 2024-06-19, 05:37:

That’s a creative solution! There has been talk about spray painting PC’s some time ago. I found this topic: Best off the shelf spray paint for beige computer cases . It might help you out in selecting colors 😀.

Was there a pun intended? Haha.

Just a curiosity.

Why just don't leave as they are?
There is nothing wrong for an old device to show his real age.

I mean, we changed too from back then. But we don't paint our self to look younger (I don't).
Because time paste, and that's ok. We, and our old stuff are just aging together, some better than the other.

Mandrew wrote on 2024-06-19, 07:29:

Not only that, but in the EU peroxide falls under the explosive precursor category since 2021 and it became quite difficult to get anything above 12%. We're just not allowed to have any fun anymore.

Chemicals.. I think university students can get access to this, still.
Same goes for people with a business registration.

It's just the ordinary citizens, the mindless "consumers" that nolonger get access to it.
Because, we're apparently being assumed immature and have to be protected by ourselves.
It's not even bad intentions, perhaps. We're just not taken seriously anymore, maybe.

The real bad guys aren't being held back by those regulations, by contrast.
You can build something bad easily using powder and cleaning supplies that are freely available.
It's mainly the tinkerers who're suffering here. 😟

This started years ago with prohibiting dry ice, or nolonger selling matchboxes to minors.
In late 90s/early 2000s, every kid could still get them in a super market.
The dry ice was useful for school projects etc.

When my father was young, they got teached in school how black powder was being made, still.
Higher classes even got demoted a Braun CRT tube, without any shielding..

And in my times, our physics teacher had showed us a pocket watch with an radioactive clock face.
He used it to demonstrate the Geiger counter with it. He even stored it in a metal box, which seemed a bit overprotective.
The isotope was behind glas, sealed. Bound by the paint.

Nowadays, there's no such demonstration anymore. Too dangerous, people say. A pocket watch.. 🙄

Haha, I had literal radiation burns on my forearms after 2nd year lab.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-06-19, 11:15:

Painting plastic can be tricky.

In my experience, which is not much and certainly not stuff that needed to look good, just needed to be a different colour, you need to get a good key into the plastic. The whole thing needs scuffing with a wire-wool or wire-brush tool, then priming with a primer for plastics.

My job for many years was printing inks onto plastics. Most types of plastic we would treat briefly with a hot flame to loosen the surface tension of the plastic in order for the ink to stick, otherwise the ink would flake off easily. Google 'heat treating plastics' to know more.

majinga wrote on 2024-06-19, 13:15:

Just a curiosity. […]
Show full quote

Just a curiosity.

Why just don't leave as they are?
There is nothing wrong for an old device to show his real age.

I mean, we changed too from back then. But we don't paint our self to look younger (I don't).
Because time paste, and that's ok. We, and our old stuff are just aging together, some better than the other.

This is my thinking as well but I can understand people restoring things "back to new" It's not just here but anything that involves old items like cars, furniture
... even people with plastic surgery

Errius wrote on 2024-06-19, 21:04:

Haha, I had literal radiation burns on my forearms after 2nd year lab.

Ouch, hope you're doing alright now.

Yeah, not everything needs fixing its colors. Personally, the most annoying are the non-uniformly yellowed plastics. I'd be more forgiving if the entire device was yellowed (e.g. a mouse). But like one side of a speaker or a rectangle that was covered by something else that fell off... to me that is too distracting to live with.

My point is that I always thought of painting as an extreme solution of retrobriting that I wouldn't accept. But seeing that it was actually employed in production by a major manufacturer, I don't find it unfaithful anymore.

The paint must be very thin for it to show through that easily, I think?
That is promising for the ability to maintain the texture of a plastic in the process.

Lets hope the amount of experimenting people have done with the retro brite processes can be applied to this instead.

Can we find out what paint CreAtive used and how they applied it?
Can we find some experts in the field?
Can we narrow it down to a selection of paints, tools, and techniques that are simpler and easier than retro briting?

Following with interest.

Cyfrifiadur wrote on 2024-06-24, 08:36:

Can we find out what paint CreAtive used and how they applied it?
Can we find some experts in the field?
Can we narrow it down to a selection of paints, tools, and techniques that are simpler and easier than retro briting?

Who is 'we'? 😋

…the community

i've always wondered about that but, the paints i see usually rubb off, maybe it was a two part paint with hardener...for plastic.

EDIT: you could send some of the paint off for lab analysis if you can chip enough off.

The brittleness of old plastic bothers me more than its color. I just broke a plastic latch on one of my old HP servers, which means the front bezel now won't stay on. Hugely pissed off by this. Hopefully I can get a replacement part somewhere. I'm thinking about getting into 3D printing just because of this.

I think the OP found the one instance where this was a fluke.
You look at pretty much any Creative CD/DVD rom drive face and they have some of the worst cases of yellowing vs. other white cd/dvd rom drives.