I don’t consider myself the most orderly person in the world, really, but within my controlled chaos I do admit to being quite manic about taking care of things. If I didn’t want it, I wouldn’t be there, after all, so what less than not seeing that Super Nintendo as if he had been with a compulsive smoker for 20 years throwing nicotine on him.
Today it’s time to talk about why old consoles turn yellowish over time, and what can we do both to prevent it and to fix it if it has already gotten completely out of hand. It’s not a cake walk, but it’s easier than I expected, frankly.
The culprit that your consoles turn yellow
It’s really gross to see how old consoles start to get yellowish
The culprit behind this is the same one that has probably caused your grandmother’s juicer or some part of your car to end up with a similar color, a very resistant type of plastic that gained some fame in the 90s called acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. ABS for friends.
So far so good, the fascinating world of plastic, but the particularity of this material is that it uses bromo -unlike me, you should know it because it appears in the periodic table-, a chemical element that is used as a fire retardant, to prevent the machine from heating up more than necessary and burning.
The problem comes when, when exposed to ultraviolet light like the Sun, the bromine oxidizes and gives rise to a color change that, especially in white or gray plastics, ends up taking on that disgusting yellowish tone. The good news is that, luckily, it has a solution
How to avoid and remove the yellow color from old consoles
If you have an NES, a PlayStation, a Dreamcast or a Game Boy lying around that you want to keep like gold on a cloth, to avoid bromine oxidation you should protect them like sliced bread and store them in a dry place, without excess heat and away from of the light of the Sun.
If it is already too late for them and you want to continue enjoying them, displaying them, or you are excited to leave them as new before donate them to associations as playtherapy where maybe some kid can get more out of it instead of relegating them to mere clunker display, then get ready to dismount.
Work on the casing without damaging components
The idea is that the bleaching agents of this type of products act on the bromine and eliminate it from the plastic, thus preventing the unpleasant color from appearing again. As usual in these cases, there are even more professional and elaborate options like the one in this video, there and each one with their possibilities and free time.
And if by some chance you wanted to complicate your life even less, surely with a little hydrogen peroxide and a cloth with which to rub you begin to see results. Of course, follow the recommendations of the manufacturers, try to wear gloves and prevent the products from taking away the dye from other parts of the machine, such as the names.
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