White PC Engine should be white

[IrishNinja]

fantastic work here in the OP!  if my Duo-R ever starts to yellow out, would the process be about the same?

[Keith Courage]

I tried the 40 vol method from Sally beauty supply. It works great but it takes patience. I didn't bother with saran wrap like some youtube videos show. I just re-applied the cream every 12 hours or so. Took at least 72 hours under a UV reptile lamp to turn a really yellow CD drive white again. And I mean a really really yellow drive. One that is slightly yellow may take only a day or two.

[Trenton_net]

I tried the 40 vol method from Sally beauty supply. It works great but it takes patience. I didn't bother with saran wrap like some youtube videos show. I just re-applied the cream every 12 hours or so. Took at least 72 hours under a UV reptile lamp to turn a really yellow CD drive white again. And I mean a really really yellow drive. One that is slightly yellow may take only a day or two.

I would love to see the results!

[Arkhan]

I tried the 40 vol method from Sally beauty supply. It works great but it takes patience. I didn't bother with saran wrap like some youtube videos show. I just re-applied the cream every 12 hours or so. Took at least 72 hours under a UV reptile lamp to turn a really yellow CD drive white again. And I mean a really really yellow drive. One that is slightly yellow may take only a day or two.

Which bulb did you use?  Depending which one you use, you get better results.

I use the ones for tropical lizards (5.0 UVB).

But usually I just use real sunlight outside because that crap is like, 1 hour or less.

30 mins of real sun = ~ 8 hours of pretend bulb.

[warpig227]

wow should see if that works on the SNES loll

[Keith Courage]

I tried actual sun and it was taking a long time as well. Maybe the CD drive I used was too yellow to begin with. I removed all of the CD drives internals so no you shouldn't just wipe the stuff on leaving it all put together.

The 40 vol hair product was really cheap. 2.99 on sale Hah
They also had a 50 vol at my local store but decided to try the 40 instead because the 50 was $2 more and I wasn't sure how well it was going to work so I didn't want to spend any extra money.

The cream sticks to the plastic a bit and requires some rubbing with water to remove it. Not just a simple rinse.

[ApolloBoy]

I didn't use cream when I did my PCE, I used the clear stuff so all you have to do is submerge it, no rubbing stuff on needed.

[esteban]

I didn't use cream when I did my PCE, I used the clear stuff so all you have to do is submerge it, no rubbing stuff on needed.

If you don't use cream, I suggest flan instead.

[Ghudda]

I just got done whitening my CD2 unit as well as the bottom tray of my IFU unit and am extremely pleased with the results. I followed the steps exactly as Deletion did and used all of the same materials including the reptile lamp (my apartment gets no direct sunlight). I had the console under the lamp for about 12 hours total spread out across 2 days and the IFU tray for about 5-6 hours. It really does not take long to see a drastic improvement but the longer the better.

A couple of noteworthy things that I encountered:
[ul][li]I noticed zero fading of the labels on the unit itself so I wouldn't worry about the labels getting damaged in the process [/li][li]Putting the plastics too close to the UV lamp may cause too much heat and therefore cause slight warping. When whitening my IFU tray, I had the top of the tray a bit too close to the UV bulbs and it looks like it may have warped in the SLIGHTEST bit (I wouldn't even say it's noticeable).
[/li][li]I had a hard time keeping the CD2 shells submerged and ended up using a ton of taped penny rolls in order to keep them submerged. I initially tried using lead fishing weights to try and keep it sunk but the peroxide seemed to deteriorate or act aggressively with the lead so I don't advise that.[/li][/ul]
I didn't end up whitening my PCE unit itself since I am content with it as is but I may put it through the whitening process again in the near future.

Overall, following the exact same steps Deletion took, I can confirm that the process works great for whitening the CD2 unit as well as the IFU tray. My pictures don't give a 100% accurate color representation of the console but it should give you an idea of the end result.

Let me know if anyone has any questions and i'd be happy to give you some answers!

Thanks again Deletion for the informative guide!

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

[Necromancer]

Looks nice, ghudda.

Putting the plastics too close to the UV lamp may cause too much heat and therefore cause slight warping.

That's known 'round here as The Bernie Effect.

[xelement5x]

Heh, it's funny you bumped this as I just did something similar with a Saturn pad over the weekened.  I actually just put rocks on them to prevent them from floating and it seemed to work okay.  I'll have to try the penny trick.

It makes sense about the weights though, didn't someone post a link a couple pages back about doing it with ferrous iron and it's like crazy reactive?

[Ghudda]

Heh, it's funny you bumped this as I just did something similar with a Saturn pad over the weekened.  I actually just put rocks on them to prevent them from floating and it seemed to work okay.  I'll have to try the penny trick.

It makes sense about the weights though, didn't someone post a link a couple pages back about doing it with ferrous iron and it's like crazy reactive?

I had a similar thought though my main concern with putting something on top was that it'd maybe leave an imprint since the UV light wouldn't hit the covered spot or did you tape the rocks to the bottom? And yeah, i'm certainly no chemist so I went and used the first logical thing that came to mind, fishing weights. They were bubbling heavily and after removing them, had deteriorated and were smoking. Hydrogen peroxide is pretty wild.

[Keith Courage]

if you use the cream then you don't have to worry about anything floating.

[xelement5x]

if you use the cream then you don't have to worry about anything floating.

I will swing by Sally supply on the way home.  Did you mix OxyClean in with your cream stuff?  I just did straight peroxide no oxy, but it seems like the oxy intensifies the reaction?

[xelement5x]

Bumping this back up. 

I've done the whitening several times outside but the weather is a bit less regular now and I'd like to do this indoors.  Any suggestions on what people used for UV lights when doing this inside?