Is it possible to restore a sun faded Arcade cabinet Marquee?

[RetroRomper]

[Jizaboz]

No.

Due to the materials, it must be reproduced.

Personally, I would not even replace it. I have a Japanese Baseball Stars 2 insert that is totally yellow with cigarette smoke and sun fade; I think it gives it character.

[RetroRomper]

This is for preservation of what is a technically rare (but no one cares about it, so it's still cheap) Brazilian exclusive Arcade game that was developed in Japan.

It isn't going to be replaced, but I was wondering if there are any sort of say, chemical treatment that could "revitalize the colors" or other hacky tips to do so. Is there zero treatment for this sort of damage? It isn't going to be thrown out, but our goal is to scan in as close to a pristine example as possible since this will the authoritative digital copy.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

It can be done through a grueling week of SOBRIETY.

[hapticanimal]

It can be done through a grueling week of SOBRIETY.

I'm off the hooch if that is what you're referring to.

Sober 6 years and counting. Seriously though, what about the Marquee?

[Billy Mays]

One of the things I find most amusing are "kitchen gunsmiths", basically everyone is an expert in their mind until they have a pile of what the fuck did I just do sitting on their table. If it is rare then the only responsible thing to do would be to play it and let someone decades in the future worry about the marquee.

[Jizaboz]

One of the things I find most amusing are "kitchen gunsmiths", basically everyone is an expert in their mind until they have a pile of what the fuck did I just do sitting on their table. If it is rare then the only responsible thing to do would be to play it and let someone decades in the future worry about the marquee.

Correct. Better to be wore out and rare than rare and stupid looking.

[RetroRomper]

I genuinely do not understand what BLM is going on about, nor do I care as she just derailed another conversation.

Lovely.

[Casual Observer]

What about a hair dryer? I suggest this because a car flipping show i like used a hair dryer to turn a grey faded rubber strip black again.

[Tdarcos]

I'll give you what I guessed, then I went to check and found out I was right.

The reason there is no way to "restore" sun damaged ink is there is nothing to restore. The ultraviolet in sunlight reacts with the pigments, causing them to react, and volatize, essentially boiling away. I's a slow process taking weeks to months, to years.

If it was fast, say over a few hours, like it is when paint dries, you could smell it; the ink or paint drying, the odor of volatile organic compounds, would be unmistakable. But in this case, it's not millions of molecules of solvent or ink evaporating, it's a tiny amount too small to smell, or even see, at least at first. If a cup of water sits out, in a dry, warm environment, the air will absorb some water, and the relative humidity of the room will increase. The amount is too small to see but over time, becomes noticeable.

In the case of ink, consider at the molecular level, the ink would look like shingles on a roof, many overlapping each other. The air around you is moving, and the sunlight - actually the ultraviolet in sunlight - acts to break down the molecular bonds holding the molecules of pigment to each other on the surface. Once it's broken down, the "shingles" of pigment are no longer held down by adhesive force, they're just lying there, and the motion of air molecules (for flat surfaces) and/or gravity (for vertical ones), knocks the pigment loose. In small, microscopic quantities of a few molecules at a time, you can't see it happening, but it does. Eventually colors decay as some of the pigment "bleaches off" where a white color loses molecules of blue, turning a yellowish or "dingy" white, or the entire color is lost, resulting in a fade, where the intensity is reduced. Other colors that are a mixture of two or more colors will have a shift in color as some of the colors flake off and escape.

Thus, it's like "restoring" the water in a radiator that has boiled off, you can't restore what isn't there. Now, you might ask, how is it some chemicals can brighten things like plastic covers or metals? Well there, it's a different effect, oxygen in the air has chemically changed the surface molecules to have, in effect, a "skin" or "film" effect. the molecules are there, they just have a chemical reaction changing their appearance. Other chemicals can reverse oxidization by removing the oxygen that has bonded to the surface.

[Billy Mays]

I would like to take back my original answer and change it to hair dryer as well.

[RetroRomper]

The reason there is no way to "restore" sun damaged ink is there is nothing to restore. The ultraviolet in sunlight reacts with the pigments, causing them to react, and volatize, essentially boiling away. I's a slow process taking weeks to months, to years.

Thank you Paul, and I'm serious when I say that and that your answer was exactly what I was looking for. I was hopeful there may be some non-obvious method to bring out some of the original colors, but assumed there wasn't.