Cleaning rubber rollers

Alcohol dries rubber eventually hardening rollers. Thinking of printer rollers here.

What alternative cleaner do you use on printer rollers and such?

I?ll take my answer off the air. (c:

Thanks.

Reply to
DaveC
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I have used careful sanding. LOL I don't have long term results of rubber rejuvenators. I also don't know if quick alcohol cleaning does long term damage. There are other fast drying electronic cleaners.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

I usually find the opposite problem ,surface goes shiney, a light rub around with beautician's backed-sandpaper sliver, whatever they call them

Reply to
N_Cook

Many years ago, when I did that dype of stuff, we had a spray can labelled "Rubber Roller Restorer". It was used by spraying on and wiping off.

A quick Google search reveals that several manufacurers make a product of that name.

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RoRo
Reply to
Robert Roland

Alcohol dries rubber eventually hardening rollers. Thinking of printer rollers here.

What alternative cleaner do you use on printer rollers and such?

I?ll take my answer off the air. (c:

Thanks.

Platenclene.

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Kenny

Reply to
Kenny

The Platen is the glass surface in photocopiers.....

RL

Reply to
legg

The platen is also the rubber roller of a typewriter, anyway the manufacturer refers to it as a rubber restorer

Reply to
Andy Burns

A couple hundred years ago I had a small side business repairing typewriters and small office equipment. I used Fedron to "restore" rubber rollers, as well as a little Very Light sanding of the surface if it was glazed.

An Amazon.com ref:

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I was surprised to see the stuff still available now that all the typewriteras are either in museums or landfills. :-)

Jonesy

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Reply to
Allodoxaphobia

The Platen is the glass surface in photocopiers.....

RL I always used Platenclene for VCR and audio tape deck pinch rollers, you obviously didn't read the description of what it is.

Reply to
Kenny

On 22 Oct 2016, DaveC wrote (in article):

-=-=-=-

I?ve been misunderstood from the get-go.

The rollers are fine. I don?t need a restorer. I just want to keep from accelerating their hardening over time by using a cleaner that doesn?t dry them out faster than heat and oxygen do.

I?ll check out the links to cleaners some provided.

Thanks.

Reply to
DaveC

I was unaware that the term had been adopted to describe the typewriter part, for which this product was designed. In printing or publishing, the platen is generally flat, unless specifically designed for odd surfaces.

The product description of the original post (Amazon) was uninformative.

RL

Reply to
legg

No, you mis-stated the problem. Read your own posting and see how you would answer your own question. You asked for a "cleaner" and received several suitable replies.

You could make a fortune if you had a process for doing that.

Rubber rollers contain a well controlled percentage of some type of oil. It's this oil that gives the rubber its flexibility which helps prevent surface wear. As I vaguely recall and am too lazy to search for, it's about 10-25% oil by weight. The way the oil is injected into the rubber is with a solvent carrier. These are usually noxious solvents such as toluene and xylene. The oil can be almost anything that doesn't attack the rubber or interfere with the various rubber additives. Here's a pitch line for soy oil in rubber: "Tests have shown that using soy oil in tires can potentially increase tread life by 10 percent while reducing the use of petroleum-based oil."

When rubber "dries out", it really means that it has lost most of the surface oil mixed in with the rubber. Smearing some oil on the surface won't replace the oil. What does work is a mix of oil and a carrier (tolune or xylene) which expands the rubber sufficiently for the oil to be absorbed. How much is absorbed will determine the life of the rubber part. Too much and it might fall apart. Too little and you're left with a rock hard surface. Using pure solvent, with no oil, is a guaranteed failure because it expands the rubber, but does not replace any of the missing oil.

Note that this has nothing to do with the vulcanization failure in rubber, where the rubber de-vulcanizes, reverts back to "natural" rubber, and turns into a sticky, gooey, tar-like mess.

Good luck.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

liter fluid..

Jamie

Reply to
M Philbrook

Do you happen to know what causes contangion in rubber ? If one band fails by stretching or going gooey, then the others usually are failing in the same way. I'm assuming they are not of the same batch at manufacturing and then the same ageing failure but some gas or biological vector moving about inside a casing

Reply to
N_Cook

Sorry, no clue. I have seen the problem, but simply assumed that there was some kind of gaseous attack on the rubber and that all the rubber parts were equally affected. This might offer a clue as to what is happening: However, I don't see how heating in an oxygen free environment explains the deterioration found in consumer electronics.

I really wished that I knew the mechanism, because I could then make a fortune devulcanizing rubber automobile tires and recycling the resultant "goo" into new tires.

Incidentally, there are bacteria that eat rubber: and eat other hydrocarbons (plastic, fuel, sewage, etc): or the nightmare of having our plastics dominated civilization eaten alive by GMO bugs:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Three things, from the most to least common, and depending on the compositi on of the material:

a) Ozone - Ozone will attack both synthetic and natural rubber from neopren e to latex-based materials to a greater or lesser degree depending on vario us admixtures. Ozone is pretty much everywhere there are motors, electrical parts that switch on and off, lightening, automobiles, fuel-fired systems and more.

b) UV - Any rubber material as above exposed to UV will gradually dry out, or even melt as the hardeners are compromised. Some materials are an amalga m of celluloid based components and rubber components that will also decay very quickly when exposed to UV. Remember celluloid doll heads and other to ys shrinking and crumbling over time.

c) Outgassing - many products made from natural and man-made materials, esp ecially odd mixes as were commonly used 'back in the day' are prone to outg assing as well as some level of oxidation, even if not vulnerable to UV or Ozone. The most obvious of these is Catalin, a pre-Bakelite product that is made from the same basic ingredients, but without the aggregates (typicall y carbon-black, lignen (sawdust) and other stabilizers. Many soft rubbers u sed as platens were made from specialized mixtures with peculiar admixtures to give them specific properties. Which evaporated over time - sometimes ( as with catalin) a very, very long time.

Chemical restorers attempt to undo/repair damage by replacing volatiles. Th at is about all that can be done without adding non-OEM materials. The idea l is to stay ahead of the damage rather than to try and recover once starte d.

This, in some ways, is similar to White Metal disease, which is due to envi ronmental exposure to trace amounts of such things as formaldehyde - presen t (back in the day) in insulation, glues, plywood and much more. It is a ma tter of specific material, types of exposure, local environmental condition s and several other factors, no single one being the single cause.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

Reply to
pfjw

Thanks for the detailed reply. I once found a paper that discusses rubber roller life in copier service. To obtain reliable operation, the oil impregnated in the roller must be maintained. It seems that the roller changes diameter when the oil is lost. The heat in the fuser section makes evaporation a serious problem. Here's a patent for one system for replacing the oil while the copier is running: "Oil secreting supply roller for an electrophotographic printer" While not a practical solution for turntables and tape machines, it might be adapted to laser printers.

I found another article a few months ago on roller life versus roller oil content, but can't find it. maybe later.

gotta run...

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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