Acrylic Peel-Off Coating old, hard and stuck on!

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1

Hi guys,

Bit of a random question but was planning to build a clear acrylic “whiteboard” and had some old acrylic lying around at my parents… Brought it all the way to London and I cannot for the life of me get the coating off, it’s very hard and very brittle! I have tried:

  • Rubbing Alcohol
  • Acetone
  • Hand Sanitiser (Don’t ask me why)
  • Soaking it in a bath/Hairdrying it to warm the coating

All unfortunately to no prevail.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
Simon

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Send us some pictures :muscle:

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Sand it off?

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Hi Simon,

Short answer: Use heptane. (If, please use nitrile gloves and do it in the open air!)

Unfortunately, you’re in for a treat rough ride. As you might have experienced using acetone, acrylic doesn’t pair well with polar solvents. The adhesive used to bond the protective film is made so it is not soluble in water or other polar solvents. And you see how acetone frosts acrylic.

You can easily obtain adhesive remover from the hardware store. I recommend laying paper towels over the acrylic with the problematic protective film and soaking them with the adhesive remover. After 15 minutes you can start scraping the film off. I recommend using a plastic scraper.

We stock acrylic sheets at SLMS, if you want any, just check out the shop on the SLMS website, not here on Discourse. (You need to be logged in)

Hope that helped a little, :crossed_fingers:
Mark

P.S.: It should have similar features like this one:
https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1399573O/3m-adhesive-cleaner-08984.pdf

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