Voyager keys -- glossy vs matte

[Euler]

Howdy,

Is there an easy way to polish the matte keys of late Voyager models into a nice glossy shine, like that of the early models?

[Karl Schneider]

Quote:

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Howdy,

Is there an easy way to polish the matte keys of late Voyager models into a nice glossy shine, like that of the early models?

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Are you referring to Chinese-made HP-12C's from the mid-1990's onward, or 1986-1994 Voyagers from USA, Brazil, and Singapore? The Chinese 12C's have printed keys that would certainly fade if polished. The keys of the non-Chinese models aren't fundamentally different, to my knowledge.

-- KS

[Euler]

Quote:

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Are you referring to Chinese-made HP-12C's from the mid-1990's onward, or 1986-1994 Voyagers from USA, Brazil, and Singapore? The Chinese 12C's have printed keys that would certainly fade if polished. The keys of the non-Chinese models aren't fundamentally different, to my knowledge.

-- KS

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You nailed it Karl! My trusted 20+ year old 12C is about to die (keys are behaving erratically), so I bought a new one to replace it. The new one is in fact made in China.

Aside from the fact that the blue labels are almost unreadable, the matte keys are not to my taste. I toyed with the idea of swapping the entire front plate + keyboard, but there seems to be no easy way to do that without destroying both units. I thought that using some polish solution might just do the trick, but apparently not :(

Well, I'm glad I asked before trying.

[bill platt]

I think your old 12c was originally matte, but polished from use.

If your keys are behaving erratically, you may just need a good cleaning. There are a number of articles on that.

If you take the batteries out, you can actually soak the machine in water (clean water with low mineral content) and you can even put it in an ultrasound (in water of course) and then after a few days in a warm place, not hot, but with moving air it will dry out and you can put the batteries back in. Sometimes this will improve erratic keys, if they were sticking due to gunk getting in there over the years.

[Paul Brogger]

I don't know about Voyagers, but I have noticed that a middle-era HP-32SII of mine had distinctly dull-looking keytops. (By "middle-era", I mean a late model that still had double-shot molded keys, before they started printing the keytops.) Unfortunately, I don't have the unit anymore, and so can't give a serial number.

Anyway, it looked as though it may have been standard practice to "sand down" the keytops with some sort of grinding process -- probably to even out any imperfections in the molded lettering. What seemed to have been missing was a follow-on buff or polish. (Pronounced "paul-ish", not "Poe-lish".)

But, of course, this is just an excuse to add something to the Forum, as it doesn't help with your question. Sorry!