Rubbing alcohol usually gets rid of it.

This removes the layer of rubber and leaves the shiny plastic, as long as the rubber layer is thin.

Worth a try, as you‘d probably just toss the device anyway.

No, this is thick rubber, several millimeters. Not just a surface coating. It's actually part of the stick structure. But its surface has gone sticky.

Just saw a youtube video with a guy removing the coating with gasoline, it seems to do the job better than alcohol.
I haven't tried this myself and I don't know if I want to, because from car experience I believe this can also affect plastics and leave white marks.
So I still torture myself with alcohol whenever I encounter one of those things. Even if it's thick alcohol will remove the first layer and you get some time before you need to this again and again.

Again "coating" is not really the right term here. These are thick rubber parts which have gone sticky.
I was told in another place (discord) to use baby powder to recondition a surface like that, I will give it a try.

My Saitek X55 did this. So cross, it wasn't even that old. Electronics manufacturers need to stop putting this rubberised coating on things. I hate it...

It was a total pain to clean off. Isopropyl Alcohol and lots of elbow grease and microfibre cloths is my recommendation. Have another cloth damp with a dish soap solution and use that to wipe down the sticky surfaces as well. Isopropyl isn't very good at lifting gunk so the dish soap helps.

There's no point trying to dust it with powder. You'll never stabilize the coating now that it has started to decompose. The only option is to strip it back.

I did my X55 without disassembly, but it would be easier to do it disassembled.

Logitech gamepad and Nikon D50 DSLR were my worse ones to do.
Magic eraser and 70%, isopropyl alcohol and patience while scrubbing helped me succeed. I tried microfiber cloths, but they gunked up too quickly IMHO.

They even use this crap on remote controls, even Arcam used this on theirs .

EDIT: I might try the dish soap next time. Experiment with a few things, but did not think of trying that. Lighter fluid did not seem effective, by the way.

Skip the babypowder it doesn't work.. A solvent like alcohol can get it off but it is a pain. I have several ibm laptops that are like this and also a saitek joystick. The joystick is probably not even worth my time to be honest, it takes for ever to get it off..

Also don't rub for too long or you will get to the layer underneath and you need to scrub even more 🤣 to make it look nice. 😁

I never got why they put rubber coating on stuff you touch as it will react with any oily substance. Have those connexicon controllers at work and being an industry environment they start to degrade after only a few years...

Joakim wrote on 2024-09-13, 14:28:

Skip the babypowder it doesn't work.. A solvent like alcohol can get it off but it is a pain. I have several ibm laptops that are like this and also a saitek joystick. The joystick is probably not even worth my time to be honest, it takes for ever to get it off..

Also don't rub for too long or you will get to the layer underneath and you need to scrub even more 🤣 to make it look nice. 😁

I never got why they put rubber coating on stuff you touch as it will react with any oily substance. Have those connexicon controllers at work and being an industry environment they start to degrade after only a few years...

I suspect they misjudge the stability of the compound in some use cases versus expected life span. Dell used that stuff on laptops too, by the way.

In this situation you could also try something like scraping the worst off, then wrapping it with bicycle handlebar grip tape or similar. ... There's a few things in the day I wrapped with electrical tape, but now I can't find an electrical tape that doesn't turn to goo in 5 years either. There was a Compaq notebook with a large flat area of it, I put clear macktack/librex type sticky back plastic on.

Have tried talc/baby powder... it sort of works if you catch it when just getting a little tacky, but at full on sticky stage it's useless.

I've used denatured alcohol to remove the sticky layer, then a little wd-40 to make it nice again. Works well for me so far, although not sure about how think the rubber is you are talking about here.

Rubber degrades like this eventually. I've got a nice p/2 keyboard that's gone that way, and an entire Aerocool case including all surfaces and the fans. Microsoft mice. Mouse balls, etc etc. Rubbing with alcohol seems to fix it, until the next time... and the next time.... etc.

I had a camera with this problem, used to leave black all over my hands... the whole case coating became a mush - took a few hours but eventually I got (almost) all of it off with alcohol.

Where components are made from rubber for good reason this is bad enough to have to deal with, but that damn decision to coat so many products with this shit is really annoying, especially that Aerocool case where it's in all sorts of nooks and crannies.

Oh I remembered this flashlight I did a thing to, was getting to gooey and I put baking soda on it, now it didn't work like the talk it hardened it and made it shiny somehow, possibly a reaction between the alkali and oil... thing it, it is kind of marbled grey and not quite smooth all over so it looks like it's turning mouldy or something, but hasn't gone sticky again in ... well since pre covid when I did it. Possibly there might be a more refined way to do it, like use a saturated baking soda solution so you get an even finish.