Cleaning Electronics with Sugar

legoburner writes "Instructables.com has an article on removing logos from your PDAs or Cell Phones using sugar. Basically, the sugar crystals are strong enough to remove the logo (sticker), but are too soft to scratch the casing leaving it unscathed. The article has many pictures of the process as well as a thorough walkthrough. Let the rebranding of all your electronics begin!"

pour some sugar on me....

[acedotcom]

or my phone. why would i do that to my $200 razr?

Careful doing this

[popo]

This technique works great on PDA's and phones where the natural casing texture is what's under the logo,
but if you've got a 'chromed' phone/PDA (particularly with a color), you may find yourself scratching off
the background color as well.

Sometimes the logos are actually printed in 'negative', where the background color 'is' the print and the
logo is negative space.

And those sticky label ion my laptop?

[mdm42]

Now if someone could tell me how to remove those crappy "Designed for Windows XP" and "Centrino Mobile Technology" labels without leaving a residue or damaging or scratching the casing, I'd be ever so grateful.

I hate those things.

Something else that works

[wkitchen]

I used some 3M Citrus based spray cleaner to get some old labels and label glue off of a monitor. After letting the cleaner sit for a few minutes, the label glue wiped off easily, as did the Dell logo. Totally clean, as if it had never been there. The plastic housing was unharmed. Didn't even dull the surface.

Re:Toothpaste

[backwardMechanic]

Brasso works well too. A little bit more aggressive than toothpaste. They make a nice two step process.

Re:Sugar sounds good but I use to use this method.

[Majik Sheff]

I can attest to this. Part of our business where I work is refelting pool tables. To hold the felt in place at the edges we use 3M Super 77 spray glue (banned in California). The only and I mean ONLY way to get the glue off of the slate is by using lighter fluid. The stuff is simply amazing at removing just about anything solvent based. When we clean the crap off of our other equipment we use :

Wildcat tape remover (for lightweight labels and tape residue)
Ronsonol lighter fluid (for high-strength decals, grease, tar, gum, etc)
Sudsing ammonia (will strip many kinds of ink, plus cigarette tar)
99% Isopropyl alcohol (removes permanent marker, flux, some silkscreen inks)
Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
Novus scratch removal system
Mother's aluminum polish

Nice but.

[1 reply beneath your]

Is it legal? I mean, if I was verizon coming out in the market with a rebranded cell phone I'd probably like to make it illegal for users to unbrand it, just like it's illegal to unlock the software and use it on another network. If you don't like being locked in, buy the more expensive unlocked phone ... Then again if we're talking manufacturer brands, I am proud of my Sony Ericsson P990i, why would I wanna hide it's brand?