How To Clean Brushed Aluminum Products
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,560 words · ~7 min read
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lonus and I are fairly well known for consistently complaining about brushed
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aluminum finishes because products that have them are really frustrating to
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handle an example of this is my fairly recent bit Phoenix Prodigy video where
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yet again I can barely touch the product with my hands make it pretty tricky to
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actually do a case review well a member of our community on that video has
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pointed out that it's no big deal mfk 51
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said that you can just clean oil etge fingerprints off with some Windex
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our first specimen is one of our g750 j-z gaming laptops they aren't super old
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so there hasn't been a ton of time for hand oils to etch very deep into the
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brush aluminum but it's still quite covered and quite gross overall so we're
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going to see how well the Windex method Works another idea that we will be
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testing on this laptop is different types of Strokes which might work best
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for different folks you normally want to clean with the grain so go with the
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brush strokes and the aluminum but in areas that this would be difficult we're
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going to test a circular motion to see if it actually really matters so just to
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start off going to spray our cloth with a fairly large amount of Windex cuz we
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have a lot of surface to cover and then just kind of go to town
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so for the major parts I'm going to be going with the
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grain so just down the laptop
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essentially cuz the grain is just straight down the laptop
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now this top part I can mostly get it by going with the
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green but not entirely so there's still there's still
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definitely areas there that didn't get very well taken care of and when you're
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doing this you want to go all the way down and over the edge so that you don't
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leave um Gunk at the end so you don't
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leave any marks there so it's kind of
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hard here because you can see I can't get all the way up in there so we're
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going to try the circular pattern up here by kind of shoving my finger into
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the cloth and using it as more of a direct applicator and then just trying
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to get up in
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there next we have an old Silverstone tj10 that has been around the office for
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quite a while now this was a production computer for quite some time so it has
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definitely seen its fair share of abuse in the oily hands Department especially
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on the front panel we'll be cleaning the tower's front panel on one side with
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Windex and on the other side with 99% isopropyl alcohol just to see if there
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is any differences between these two products when it comes to cleaning
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brushed aluminium one thing that should be noted is that after quite a bit of
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use this Tower was already wiped down all over with isopropyl alcohol by lonus
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before it was stored in the garage for a few months so the marks on it that you
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see now have already survived one cleaning so we've sectioned off the
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front of the case the left side is for isopropyl alcohol and the right side is
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for Windex the you can see in the top right hand corner it's been sectioned
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off again that's because this is where people would open the actual case so
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this is the worst problem area so we didn't want to have Windex just deal
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with that by itself and alcohol have an easy time but below this is generally
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the same as the rest of the case so we just sectioned off this top part and the
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left side will again be alcohol and the right side will be Windex but then the
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rest of it will be cleaned by just their respective individual cleaners so here
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we have the first cloth which has already been dosed with alcohol and then
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so I'm going to brush with the grain because we just have a very large surface here so it should be easy enough
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to just do
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that I'm be putting in a little bit of elbow grease but not way too
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much we're going to have have to let it I know the alcohol evaporates super
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quickly but we're going to have to kind of let it dry a little bit for the Windex so after I clean the Windex
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section here give me a sec to get a Different
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Cloth
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okay after I do the Windex section um
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we're probably going to have to cut for a little bit let it dry and then come
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back
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so it actually looks really good um I did go and talk to lonus after I noticed
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the alcohol worked really well considering he already cleaned it with
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alcohol it shouldn't have had fingerprints on it looking at it now and
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when talking to him he may have used paper towel instead of microfiber cloth
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and he definitely used less alcohol on the cloth than I did so that might have
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something to do with it maybe a little bit more alcohol a bigger and better
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cloth might help a lot so just something
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to take note of as the alcohol did look like it did a really good job but so did
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the Windex I just expected the Windex to beo the alcohol by a lot in this case
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because we had already used alcohol and there was fingerprints on it but they
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both looked like they did really good both in the harder test and the top
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right hand corner which had a lot more fingerprint etching and in the not so
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bad areas on the far left and bottom right hand kind of sections of the case
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as well so the circular motion pattern didn't really work I think uh a lot of
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the reason why it didn't really work as the residue that the Windex leaves behind if you're able to go in Broad
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Strokes like say with the grain it should be able to go completely off and
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pull all the Windex residue with it not leaving any gross streaks behind but
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when you go in that circular pattern you're inherently leaving things behind
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so it does kind of end up being really gross overall so there you have it folks
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but before we leave you today there are two more things I want to say first off
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is that for things that are truly messed up and have a ton of deep etching on
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them you will need to repair it by using something aggressive or abrasive so you
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can wear down the area around it to make it flat but this is not really
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recommended at all with brushed aluminum
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because you will probably destroy the brush look and make it look kind of
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trash when you're done unless you're very very skilled and there might be
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some exceptions there but still still just don't and second is that whatever
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MEK 51 thinks this still doesn't excuse the use of brush aluminum on products
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that were actually meant to touch wrist rests computer cases monitors Etc is
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still quite hard to work with and we will still likely be complaining when it
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is used in stupid places like wrist rests for your keyboard and other things
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as well but at least armed with this method and regular maintenance you'll
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have a chance to keep it goodlooking in the long run all right guys thanks
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thanks for watching make sure that you stay tuned and stay subscribed for that
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mineral oil cooled computer that's hopefully coming sometime soon if I can
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drag lonus into the room to start actually filming that video like dislike
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the video like if you like bacon dislike if you don't like bacon comment in the
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video down below if you have something to say about cleaning aluminum maybe there's some other methods I know there
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are a few other methods so what methods do you like the most also comment on the
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you guys next time
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