Guys,, I appreciate the effort to find solutions for this, but don't beat your heads together about it.
Aromatic HCs like toluene and xylene are off limits indoors. I get very sick from their fumes and can't afford to risk using them, even with respiratory protection. Its too freaking cold outside to clean the drivers there, so it has to be done inside. I have a fume extractor in my garage but it draws in cold outdoor return air, so it's going to make everything too cold to work.
Aromatic HCs like toluene and xylene are off limits indoors. I get very sick from their fumes and can't afford to risk using them, even with respiratory protection. Its too freaking cold outside to clean the drivers there, so it has to be done inside. I have a fume extractor in my garage but it draws in cold outdoor return air, so it's going to make everything too cold to work.
The idea was to make the adhesive lose its strength, making the foam easy to remove.
There is a substitute for CCl4, TCE or something, that might work.
Benzene?
Yes, WD40 will leave a residue, but it is an excellent penetrating lubricant.
Then you can clean off the residual oil with a suitable safe solvent.
There is a substitute for CCl4, TCE or something, that might work.
Benzene?
Yes, WD40 will leave a residue, but it is an excellent penetrating lubricant.
Then you can clean off the residual oil with a suitable safe solvent.
btw, this works great for removing shipping labels so you can reuse packages, and I used the same method to remove annoying Intel/Windows decals from laptops. The difficulty is obviously the tiny area to heat up the gasket without disturbing the surround. Maybe there's a way to cordon off the surround (D75 endcap 🤣 ), and then use a temp adjustable iron with suitable tip, or just safely blast around it with a hairdryer. The temp needed to relax the adhesive is less (and needs to be less than) the temp at which the surround will start melting.
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You can NOT remove residual oil which was absorbed by rubber, turning it onto putty.
You want that rubber surround crumbling down por tirned into "chewing gum" in 2-4 Months?
In any case, I do not understand why there is a continued discussion about oils, including WD40, "transformer oil", etc. 🙄 in a discussion about softening and removing a speaker foam edge.
Absolutely different adhesives.
Decal type is "pressure" adhesive, always tacky, never cures or hardens; speakers are glued by fluid adhesives which dry up and harden after being applied.
If in a hurry (I have done it to meet some deadline) you can use them like conventional contact cement, but then when parts touch each other, they stay there, period, no possible position adjustment or centering afterwards, you get what you get initially.
In a 100 speaker run, I can expect up to 2 or 3 which are poorly centered for that reason, while if applied fresh/still liquid, centering shims can do their job.
Of course, then you have to wait a few hours for cement to thicken enough to keep parts in place, sometimes even briefly clamping parts in place, because wet contact cement has no tackyness, by definition.
"Rubber cement": neoprene + solvent type, not only dries and hardens by solvent evaporation, "usable" overnight but then even harder in, say, a week, but also incorporates some hardening/vulcanizing agent which works by oxidation (contact with air); after, say, 6 Months or a year it becomes insoluble in any solvent, period.
Best you can expect by soaking in Toluene/Xylene (and to a limited effect Benzene, almost nothing with Naphta) is sewlling and softening (but not dissolving, by any means) enough for careful separation.
Often by "pushing aside" rather than "pulling up" if this explains it better.
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I'm questioning why you're calling this transformer oil when it's just a range of compounds that happen to be sometimes used in transformer oil. This is very confusing. Mineral oil is often transformer oil, sure. You should not say "transformer oil is mineral oil".
Like, imagine telling someone on your maintenance team, "we need some transformer oil, please order some". You don't think they'll ask you what kind to get? Especially when there are now quite commonly transformer oils that have nothing to do with mineral oil whatsoever. If this still doesn't make sense, then I'll just stop bothering you about this.
Lastly - you don't know that PCBs are irrelevant in this day and age, same as how we don't know how much CFCs are still being made for refrigerant purposes. Let's see how comfortable you are sticking your hand into a bucket of transformer oil of unknown provenance.
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