cleaning Acrylic

[jamesRugby]

I have Isopropanol for cleaning Acrylic my question is this

do you use it neat or dilute it with water
what is the best way to use it straight on to a rag or a water sprayer??

James

[Graysalchemy]

Acrylic scatches very easily. You are best peeling away the protective cover blowing it with air and putting the picture straight in. Acrylic has so much static that cleaning it with anything will probably attract more dust. Also It should be perfectly clean when you take the film off. If you do use a cloth use a microfibre cloth and be very gentle. I would use your isopropanol neat on the cloth, but be careful.

Cheers

AG

[Not your average framer]

Check out the RS website at RS.COM.

I haven't bought anything from them for ages, but I'm assuming that they probably still sell their aerosol foaming anti-static cleaner.

It always used to be very popular, so I would hope that it's still available.

[iantheframer]

If it is new and still has the protective cover I would not try to clean it as previously mentioned. There are anti-static brushes that you can buy. we give it a quick brush over with one of these and it reduces the static enough to make fitting relatively easy.

If it is old and dirty then we use a standard glass cleaner with a micro-fibre cloth before using the brush

If you are buying acrylic try to use artshield from G&M it has a non-scrath coating and is noticably less static.

[stcstc]

i have an ionizing air gun, which discharges static

when you doing acrylic mounting brushing is not enough, you need to clean it very very well, as any little bit of dirt will show with facemounted prints

i dont use isopropyl as i read somewhere it can breakdown acrylic and make surface cracks


there is a specialized cleaner for designed for cleaning acrylics.

[Not your average framer]

i dont use isopropyl as i read somewhere it can breakdown acrylic and make surface cracks

I can't point to any evidence for this, but this is also what I have been led to understand. I don't know if acrylic contains any plasticisers, but Isopropanol (Isopropyl alchohol) can leach out the plasticisers from certain other plastics. The effects of doing this may not be immediately obvious, but may prove catastrophic with problems only occurring some time later.

A safer method may be to use a safe water based detergent with known anti-static properties, but it would be wise to consult the manufacturers product data sheet before trying it.