What is the type of plastic that degrades into a sticky substance after a couple years?

[shortylickens]

Its found on all sorts of cheap plastic products and alcohol doesnt do a good job of cleaning it.
My recent offender was a 3rd party video game controller and the grips (but not the body) of a gun shaped flash light.

 

[Steltek]

Its found on all sorts of cheap plastic products and alcohol doesnt do a good job of cleaning it.
My recent offender was a 3rd party video game controller and the grips (but not the body) of a gun shaped flash light.

I don't know what it is, but if you want to see a very good example just look at the melting dashboard of any Nissan car more than a few years old. Gasoline is pretty much the only thing I've found that will take that crap off....

 

[shortylickens]

I have a 12 year old Nissan and thats not it.
And I dont need a chemical to "take it off" because the stuff doesnt "come off". It degrades. Its not a layer on top of the plastic. It IS the plastic.
Like imagine if you had a really slow melting ice cube. You arent removing a layer of water. It IS water. the object is slowly disintegrating.

 

[TheELF]

I have a 12 year old Nissan and thats not it.
And I dont need a chemical to "take it off" because the stuff doesnt "come off". It degrades. Its not a layer on top of the plastic. It IS the plastic.
Like imagine if you had a really slow melting ice cube. You arent removing a layer of water. It IS water. the object is slowly disintegrating.

Even if it's not a layer it is usually on a base of not melting plastic, like the grips on your light, and you can get it of at least in some cases,I have used spiritus myself to remove a cover of this stuff on a cheap android handheld.
If you have something that is completely made of this stuff then yeah obviously you wouldn't want to disappear the whole device.

It's not the plastic itself, it's the plasticizer it's a chemical they add to make the plastic softer and nicer to hold (better grip) depending on the plasticizer after a long time the plastic can become either brittle because it leaked out of the plastic or it can become gooey because the plasticizer does too well of a job.

 

[mindless1]

Silicone rubber, or TPE, exudes silicone oil and needs a very strong, hot detergent solution to clean it off.

You can clean it off as above and with an abrasive cloth, but it will come back over time till all the silicone oil is gone and it's brittle, so it is worth cleaning to keep using but just a sign of designers who don't care about long term lifespan, or to be fair, there are real benefits to this type of covering in shorter term use but if you need to grip something THAT bad, it opens a whole new can of worms, philosophically, whether that is worth supporting creation of throwaway products that become more slippery when aged with that goo all over the grip.

It is worse on the cheaper Chinese products where the compound isn't as stable.