Great way to strip paint off an arcade cabinet

[creatine28]

Thought this might be handy for someone?  I bought an arcade cabinet about a week ago,  it was a conversion from Centipede to Sky Soldiers.  Someone had painted black paint over the centipede artwork. (UGH)   I used some stuff from Home depot called Lift off and man this stuff worked great.  There are like 5 different versions of this stuff, the one I got is specifically made to remove Latex paints.  I sprayed this stuff on by cabinet sides and let it set for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and then scrapped the black paint  off with ease.  I was totally surprise,  the paint came off and the Centipede artwork stayed!   The cabinet has a little bit of water damage at the bottom, but not enough to worry about.  Anyways I now have one side completely cleaned and it looks great, now I need to do the other side.   The one side only took me around an hour, it probaly would have been less time, but I was kind of testing the spray just in case it ate up my artwork!  Well, for anyone interested, here's the stuff I used.  Its only like $6.97 for a bottle (Great Stuff!)

http://www.liftoffinc.com/home.asp

[MameFan]

Now do they make something that will remove 20 year old dried contact cement off the side of a Pacman cab that still has graphics on it (albiet damaged).  I pulled off the formica sides (it was converted to Arkanoid) and now am left with a rough, "pilly" surface of pink contact cement.  Everything I tried either does nothing to it, or also eats into the paint.  Only thing that sorta worked was a random orbital sander with a totally used-up pad... using heat and motion to rub it off.. but that would take days to get it all off!

[creatine28]

You might want to try the #2 of their product, looks like its made for adhesives.  

http://www.liftoffinc.com/product_2.htm

[SNAAAKE]

why "try" to strip off paint  
cant you just sand it right off...?Everything !  

Mamefan:best you could do is use cooking oil and try to remove contact cement...thats how I do it when i spill some extra around the cabinet.
I dunno......

[creatine28]

why "try" to strip off paint  
cant you just sand it right off...?Everything !  

If I didn't want the art under the paint I probaly would, but this stuff strips the paint and leaves a nice finish.  When I was done I had a small amount of paint peels on the ground and also best of all this stuff doesn't smell as harsh as Jasco or other paint removers.

It was so much easier to spray and wipe, then to use a sander.  Less mess and only took a small amount of time and effort.

[anthony691]

Now do they make something that will remove 20 year old dried contact cement off the side of a Pacman cab that still has graphics on it (albiet damaged).  I pulled off the formica sides (it was converted to Arkanoid) and now am left with a rough, "pilly" surface of pink contact cement.  Everything I tried either does nothing to it, or also eats into the paint.  Only thing that sorta worked was a random orbital sander with a totally used-up pad... using heat and motion to rub it off.. but that would take days to get it all off!

I too had a problem with this, I wound up using Gasoline   . It really worked the best, BUT IT IS VERY VERY DANGEROUS ON MANY LEVELS!!! (toxic, skin irritent, eye irritent, VERY FLAMABLE)

I even tryed to sand it off, but I only wore out like 50 sheets of san paper and got nowhere. I tryed rubbing alcohol, nailpolish remover, and everything else under the sun. I even tryed this stuff made for this purpose (called txt-be-gone) it didn't even work! This was heavy duty stuff.

Picture me and my brother in my garage, right when I started this project; garbage bags covering our hands (gasoline messes up skin well) with rags wet down with Gasoline rubbing furiosly on this machine, until the point of complete exaustion. Damn that was hard stuff!

[Magnet_Eye]

What about 3M Safe Stripper? I thought that stuff was the "bomb" when removing outer layers of paint, while saving side art?

[creatine28]

What about 3M Safe Stripper? I thought that stuff was the "bomb" when removing outer layers of paint, while saving side art?

I couldn't find that stuff at HomeDepot, so I tried this other stuff.  Also, I think even with the 3M stripper you take a chance of removing the Artwork along with the coating of paint.  If someone knows different please let me know?  I just recall someone using that stuff to remove paint off a cabinet and took off some of their artwork.  I left this Lift off stuff a long time and nothing was removed except the black Latex paint.  That's actually the main thing,  The paint you want to remove must be a latex based paint.  Hahah it probably sounds like I'm trying to sell this stuff?  Not really, I just thought this might save a few people a lot of headaches and time!

[creatine28]

Here's some pictures!

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=2099716&uid=1113886&members=1

[MameFan]

The person you were thinking of was the one with the Crystal Castles cabinet who used safe strip and it started taking off the artwork. It got posted somewhere here not too long ago