Brother TC-225 / TC-229 adventure!

gettin a bath


its actually in pretty good condition under the caked on oil and grease and coolant.

moar clean!

so, question, how would one go cleaning the linear rails of tarnish and caked on gunk, without actually removing them? normally id just use a pedestal grinder with a non abrasive buffing type wheel, but clearly that cant work here. and im not sure theres even room to try and put a wheel on a drill and scrub them.

Acetone based paint thinner.
Bumped in it by accident some days ago, it makes cleaning stuff a breeze. And it is not corosive to aluminium or metal. Spent 3 hours yesterday cleaning some heavily dried paint, usualy i would not even bother or just use the angle grinder and make a mess, but this changed everything. I was enjoying it as you can see the results after 3 to 4 rubs.

interesting. ive used simple green so far and its working great on the grease, but its not doing much of anything to the tarnish spots. also, not thrilled about putting it on precision surfaces, cause it can lead to rust if you dont remove all of it.

ill get a bottle of acetone and a few other solvents to see what works well. i was told wd40 removes it, but it seems to do nothing at all.

WD40 does a lot of things including cleaning, but not long term stains.
Do not use pure acetone, although i can not think of any side effects except it will remove the paint too, the one used as nail polish remover will do nothing as it is diluted to much.
In all these years i have tried and tested a lot of things for all sorts of purposes like the only thing that will actualy remove rust from metal parts without doing any damage is winegar, used in salads. It needs a good rinse afterwards or it will rust all over again while you are watching it and thinking: wow this is clean.
Most usual cleaning i also do with WD40 and it leaves a nice shiny finish.
I did not know about that type of paint thiner till lately, but it does a perfect job. There are several other types of paint thiners that will not do much and beware of the oil based ones as they are..... well oily.
I can tell what type it is by smel, and this one has a distinkt acetone and alchohol smel, being the 2 main ingredients, not a surprise.
Regards,
Tom

hmm. well, ill try a few things, thanks.

the tarnish is mostly in the over travel area of the rails. theres 1-2" on each end that the blocks dont go on at all (bumper stop), and then another 10-25mm each end that is for safety. so, really, im just doing it to make things perfect and not because theres a functional issue.