Hello dear like-minded people!

I'm writing from germany, so please excuse possible wrong expressions.

Who doesn't know this: the white of the translite has been scratched or damaged by too intensive cleaning. The latter happened to me while cleaning a TAF translite of a friend, which I had here for scanning. 

The owner's understandable displeasure seemed to have set my creativity in motion.

The translite was very dirty, really soaked from bar smog. So I wanted to clean it with my cleaner of choice: Chante Clair 'Sgrassatore universale' Superpotente.

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Previously, to be on the safe side, I had cleaned my own TAF translite with it as follows: spray it, let it act for about 20 seconds, and then carefully spray it off with the shower in the bathtub. With said translite of the colleague the white came off partially, despite shorter exposure.

Anyone who has tried to restore the white of translites with white paint knows that this is only a reduction of the damage, it is usually never really good and the spot remains visible.

After the initial disillusionment that the Translite is now "gone" anyway, curiosity set in and I thought to myself: now I can do further tests with it. So I put it in the shower and put the cleaner on it again and let it work for 5 minutes and remove as much of the white as possible in one pass with a microfiber cloth. This is what the whole thing looked like after two passes:

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It quickly turned out that only the white came off, but not the actual colors!
After four passes, almost everything was gone (Cousin It remained, amazingly!). This is what an original TAF translite without white paint looks like:

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Interestingly, the white paint was much more stable and less easily removed in the area where it was protected by the moldings. I think this is due to the accelerated aging process of the areas that were exposed to the external environment (heat, light, smoke) to a higher degree. I would have been able to remove the remains with more passes, but since they are behind the moldings anyway, my main concern at first was: how do I get something of the same quality applied from behind??

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Here is another interesting picture: here I simply put a white sheet of paper behind the translite, you can see very nicely how the original image reappears and it only takes the white to get the image back in its full glory.

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Now the big question was: what do you use to get an even coat of paint on the translite? I had made attempts to spray paint old pinball glasses for playfields or even paint them with roller. The surfaces were all great, but when you held the whole thing up to the light, you immediately saw: this is a dead end!

Since I had just plotted something with my cutting plotter, the idea had come to me to use some kind of white vinyl film, because it has a uniform thickness. So I looked at Orafol's website to see what kind of films they have and after some searching I found exactly what I was looking for:

ORACAL® 8830 Diffuser Premium Cast:

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It's a white adhesive film that transmits light at 30%, which has the main effect of diffusing light! This is exactly what we want with the translite! If you don't have this diffusion effect, you can see the individual lamps behind the translite. The film is primarily used for light boxes, so that the individual fluorescent tubes can no longer be made out, so that they merge into a uniform surface. There is also an 8860, which lets 60% light through, but already the 8830 lets a little more light through than in the original translite. 

The film is very thin! So I glued it wet: put water with some detergent in a spray bottle and then wet both sides well.

From the front, the whole thing now looks like this:

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Now the white compared to before and also compared to my own translite is clearly whiter and fresher! Before it was rather slightly yellowish, because the dirt has probably already diffused through the paint. The white is now really white again: a dream!

This is how the whole thing looks from behind:

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Cousin It still "works", by the way: virtually undetectable from the front, but still visible as a black mask when lit from behind!

Conclusion: the removal of the white of a translite went relatively easily by hand and the application of the film was also made quickly! You get a very fresh white and see 100% no repair spots! The meter of foil (126 cm width) is about 15 € (you get three Translites out of it), so that the costs are also within limits with 5 € per translite. Especially since you can turn translites, which would otherwise possibly have ended up in the trash can (as it actually was intended here too), back into a real beauty.

Further procedure: 

Tests with the flashlight from the iPhone have already confirmed the outstanding scattering properties of the film! We still have to make the test in the built-in pinball machine, but for this we must first get so far that the lightboard runs!

Further tests on translites will follow, where we also want to test/compare different cleaners, how they react to the white backing.

I will keep you informed as soon as I have something new!

I hope this method can bring some translites back from the dead! 

I'm curios about your experiences with this method!

Many greetings!

David

Basically, the cleaner is a kitchen cleaner to remove grease and baked on the stove.

We also have a cleaner called Bref Power Kitchen Cleaner, which works the same way. I'm pretty sure you have something like this in the states too!

I'm nearly done with the second translite, this time A whirlwind.

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I now opted for a natural sponge for cleaning, because microfiber might be too aggressive to the actual colors! So be gentle with your tranlite!