Paint Stripping Guide

[Hieron]

PAINT STRIPPING a Intuos 3 guide


Since I was unsure how to do it and lacked a clear example, I figured out a nice way and took pictures. Wei told me to use "Thinner" which works very well but I tweaked it a bit to make the job alot easier, used some hints from train model painting forums. Tested quite some other liquids btw, most did either almost nothing or way too much.

Right on to the guide.

1. Stuffs you need.

This picture says it all really:


You need
-Muscle Oven Cleaner (leave it out and you'll need to work alot harder with the thinner!)
-Thinner (similar all around the world, use sparingly)
-Gloves (don't inhale the above 2 btw and use these gloves, both Cleaner and thinner are not nice)
-Some paper towel (for rathe rgently whiping away, no force needed.. all soft and easy)
-wrapping foil (to pack it up for some time to let the oven cleaner do its thing)

2. Start


Put the Intuos cover onto some wrapping foil which is on top of something soft, don't scratch the surface you'll want to draw on later.
You see here signs of my previous tests btw, most notably the dark black coloring of the grey paint and the clear part. The black coloring is where the muscle oven cleaner did its work during my tests and the clear area is where I then used thinner.

Without using oven cleaner, it costs alot more labor to get the paint off nicely. The Oven Cleaner thins the paint layer considerably and changes it through and through. Yet never fully takes it away. So thinner will do that for us. I covered some parts with tape but that didn't help at all. Next time I would just take off the touch strips, they can be glued back I'm sure. They come off easily enough.

3. Spray cleaner


Rather obvious..  


4. Pack it!


If you don't package it, you get alot of not so nice smells and the Cleaner will dry out real fast, stop working and leave a mess. Just pack it like this and put somewhere at normal room temperature for about 24 hours or so. All the paint will become black and thinner, also when viewed from the other side. Hold a light behind it and you can see it thinned up considerably. When done, wash the left over cleaner off very very well. Just use water and soap or whatever.

5. Thinner!

Now take out the thinner and paper towel and just rub it off softly. It will come real easy yet may still take some time to get it done everywhere. I tried some parts without Oven Cleaner and it took me easily 3x more work.

Which leaves you:


Tadaaaa!

It came out real shiny and smooth and completely stripped. I do have some minute scratches on the drawing surface (forgot the soft cloth 1x) so will have to get some screenshield or so. Which is not a bad idea anyway. It may look a bit duller/washed out on the photo but it is my ceiling reflecting on the cover. If I hold it in front of a TV/screen it's practically invisible.


ps: don't do the thinner part inside the house when your gf/wife etc is about to come home. It smells really bad even when ventilating well and from experience I can tell it will make you get ignored and have to cook your own dinner for 2 days.

[bernard]

Really nice guide!  One to keep around for sure. Lots of people tried to do that but with limited success.

LOL thanks for the gf/wife warning! yeah: These operations are definitely not "girl-friendly".  (On top of that, after all the smell, the real oven is still dirty!  )

[Drewid]

ps: don't do the thinner part inside the house when your gf/wife etc is about to come home. It smells really bad even when ventilating well and from experience I can tell it will make you get ignored and have to cook your own dinner for 2 days.

A low OHAF* then



*Other half acceptance factor.   A pseudo semi-random number somewhere between 0 and 1.

[Hieron]

indeed, thanks btw.

Changed the name to reflect the thread better btw...

[jsloss]

Like I posted in my build thread, I didn't have much luck with this. Maybe it was due to a poor choice in thinner or maybe it was just because the thinner here in the US has a different chemical makeup. The oven cleaner part worked just like you said though.

Here's what I ended up doing. I don't intend to hijack this thread, but to build on paint stripping methods as a whole.

CitriStrip > removes all the paint > Rubbing alcohol (91%) removes the leftover grime > headlight/plastic restorer polished the thing to a clear finish.

Further details here: http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/index.php?topic=1822.0

[bluewinters21]

Sweet Gideon’s Bible. Stripping the paint off a Wacom is no joke! Here is a picture with a few items that I found useful on top of the others mentioned in this post…

[Drewid]

The power of CitriStrip compels you!

[delacroix]

Any chance you can check the back of the bottle and post the actual chemical used in the thinner. There are half a dozen different chems used as paint thinner, and some react with plastics.

[Dragon]

Cool guide.  Does this work with other Intuos models like the Intuos 1 GD-1218-R?  The plastic on that model looks solid grey from the back and from the edges, so I don't imagine it can be made clear.

Also, it sounds like you said the resulting clear plastic is still scratchable so you still need a screen protector?  What do you plan to use?

[delacroix]

Just to save the next guy some time, the paint on this will not come off with white spirit (Naptha, hydrodesulfized heavy).

It comes off real easy with Gamma-Butyrolacetone, and at first it appeared crystal clear. A light wipe with a rag is all that is needed. After washing the part down it has white discolorations on it. I assume the chemical has reacted with the surface a little. Note: Gamma-butyrolacetone may be restricted in your region (has recreational uses), it wasn't when I last bought some, but that was years ago. As citristrip isn't available here, I had to improvise.

Now just to order some plastic restorer to take the white crud off.

[Carvin]

Hi,

I tried the above method and the plastic reacted to the oven cleaner.  :'(

Just use acetone, it wipes the paint of and it does not react with Wacom plastic. It cheap and fast. 


Regards,
Carvin

[Carvin]

Hi,

I forget to say, I used toothpaste to get the reaction out. It was normal Colgate Whitening (with baking powder already in it). It took about 5/6 applications and washes. Don't use water until rinsing off the toothpaste. Works really well.

This is the real tightass method of doing things. 

Laters,
Carvin