Greasy sausage fingers all over my premium carbon fiber lid

While configuring my machine to connect to the network, the computer people in my department fingered the premium carbon fiber lid on my SZ791. Gross. Now I'm not one to be picky about cleanliness in general, but this bugs me. How can I clean it? I tried gently rubbing it with my tshirt but this didn't work. I really don't want to scratch the perty carbon fiber weave so I thought Id ask for advice. Thanks

IHateMayonnaise

 

Try in an inconspicuous spot first, but I'd suggest plain old water with a couple of drops of Dawn in it. The stuff cuts oil and grease like nothing else and yet is gentle enough that they use it for cleaning oil spill remnants off birds.

Gary

 

The process of making carbon fiber usually involves carbon fiber cloth that gets soaked in a freshly-mixed solution of resin and catalyst. The resin and catalyst react chemically to harden into a solid. The cloth acts as structure. Basically, the very surface of the lid should be resin based.

Grease from fingers or food is only on the surface. It hasn't soaked into the non-porous resin. It really shouldn't take much to clean it. If it's a food stain it might've gotten dried and crusty.

If this is the case and you're following Gary's advice, I might suggest moistening a paper towel with that thinly thinly diluted soapy water, squeeze out most of the liquid til the towel is barely damp, then lay it on top of the food stain. In a few minutes, any crusty food particles will get rehydrated enough to just wipe off. Remember to give it a final wipe using ONLY water. Any trace amounts of detergent left on the surface will dry with a haze.

Instead of dishwashing liquid, I prefer to use a mixure of roughly 2 parts water to 1 part (isopropyl) rubbing alcohol. I use this on my multicoated lenses, VAIO screen, resin eyeglass lenses, smartphone touchscreen & plastic back, etc, etc. The alcohol cuts into any grease & stain, the water keeps things moist long enough to wipe away (as opposed to pure alcohol which would evaporate too quickly)

In case you're tempted, avoid using glass cleaner. Ammonia is known to make certain plastics brittle over time. I haven't verified yet, but can't imagine it being all that great for the resin in carbon fiber either.

 

There are horror stories here on NBR about the use of alchohol, especially on Vaio screens. So I'd stay away from it. The reason I specifically suggested Dawn by name is it is a grease cutter and VERY gentle.

Gary

 

i heard from sony tech that you can use alcohol to swab the premium carbon fiber lid.

 

I can really recommend using phenoxyethanol for all kinds of electronic devices. I clean my plasma, laptops and lcd screens with that for years. It doesnt harm my lcds' surface nor the laptop painting including the prem carb lid of my Z. You can get them as simple "LCD TV cleaning spray", apply that by spraying directly on the specific surface and wiping with a microfiber cloth. Removes every greasy dirt, fingerprints from the screen, palm rest, computer bottom and lid.

 

from what i know sony sell some kind of cleaning liquid for vaio z at America... and it is filled with alcohol.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&accessory=true

 

I think alcohol might be OK for the lid, but why wing it when a surfactant such as Gary suggests should do the job fine and carries less risk? If it doesn't work, you can wipe the lid with less than 10% alcohol in water, and then wipe again with the dawn mix. I definitely wouldn't suggest using pure alcohols (such as rubbing alcohol). I've dropped 100% ethanol and 100% isopropanol on several surfaces (woops), including the floor, and it believe me it can rip the surface right off. Also consider that windex and other window cleaners contain only 5% or less alcohol and work (relatively) well to remove light fingerprints and other grease.

 

Does alcohol disolve grease? It might, though, foul the display screen. Would window cleaner solution be worse?

If all else fails, you could douse a cloth with some cooking oil, or maybe some silicone, and then polish and buff the entire lid and keyboard to give a uniform shine. That would also "protect" it against the next bout with messy fingers, splatters, flying pizza food fight, or spills.

 

Window cleaners contain ammonia. NEVER EVER get ammonia near an LCD screen.

Cooking oil? Cooking oil goes rancid. No thanks.

The issue the OP has is with oil (aka grease) on the machine, adding more oil is not going to help. Dawn, a surfactant, will remove the grease and is very gentle in doing so.

Gary

 

^ Depending on the amount of grease and how embedded it is, he might need to use a low concentration of alcohol to dissolve it before the surfactant will work efficiently.

Also, the window cleaner was an example of how you don't need 100% rubbing alcohol to dissolve grease, not suggesting it for use on a computer which is a bad idea as Gary says.

 

Come on... if Dawn is safe enough to remove oil from birds, it must be safe, right? *chuckles*

In all seriousness... OP, what did you end up using? Did it work? Was it safe?

 

And did you yell at your colleagues for smushing their dirty greasy fingers all over your new toy?

 

it's not new, and they're not my colleagues. They're the computer tech people in my department.

I just sent my other SZ (still with a carbon fiber lid, but without the visible weave) and they did the same damn thing. Who eats this much sausage? seriously.

also: the soap/water thing worked well for my main machine, we'll have to whip it out again. Blast those sausage mongers!!!