My Saitek Joysticks have gone STICKY!!!!

[Zak33]

Oh god it's horrible!!

The plastic grips on my old Saiteks has somehow gone... sticky with age!

As though they've been partly disolved in a solvent.. though that's not ever occured.

I've treied cleaning them and all that has happened is they're now covered in stuck on kitchen tissue!

Just googled it... I'm not alone!

Gutted !!

[Zak33]

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-wargam...pc-review.html

I got this one in 2009, so it's taken 6 years to degrade.. but I last used it less than 18 months ago and all was well.

However both the grip on the Cybog X and the hand rest on the original Cyborg have turned sticky!

It's proper sticky too!!!

[peterb]

I've had that happen on pens and so on. One option is to remove the plastic coat with Isopropyl alcohol and just have a shiny plastic surface. Doesn't look as good, but better than a sticky peeling mess.

[SUMMONER]

Just took my old Saitek Cyborg 3D off the top shelf (bought in 2004 or there about). It needs a proper dusting, but is perfect otherwise.

Elite Dangerous here I come.

[Pob255]

Did it have a rubberised coating? If so they may of used a latex based rubber which yes will turn sticky, sun light/UV often accelerates it happening.
That's the most common material that I know of that can suddenly turn sticky and there's no cure for it once it starts.

Your only option may be able to scrape or peel off the rubberised coating.

If you can, then you could try taking it apart and separating the plastic grip from it, with none of the mechanisms or electronics attached.
Once the bits have been fully de-rubberised and stripped back to non-sticky bare plastic you can try to re-rubberise them with plasti dip http://www.plastidip.co.uk/
The spray cans can work quite well, but you do need to make sure the surface is fully dry, clean and solvent free. if you use any form of undercoat you do need to give it a good week or so for the solvents to fully bleed out of any paint before using the plasti dip on it or it'll not go down smooth and develop lumps (I tried this on a space bar, but it was a total disaster because the undercoat while dry still had too much solvent in it, it came out lumpy and additional coats of plasti dip just made it worse)
Luckily if you do mess up plasti dip you can just peel it off again fairly easily.

[SUMMONER]

Yuck, bit a of a design flaw.

[kalniel]

Have you been playing with your joystick too much Zak? As for googling it, is that SFW?

[Ttaskmaster]

Strip it down, IPA to remove the sticky crap, then mask off and spray with Plastikote.

[Zak33]

I think that's gonna have to occur... it's horrible!

[mistral_blue]

I know the last post for this was in 2015, but for anyone searching for this issue in the future - Methylated Spirit works, requires a little elbow grease/repeat application but will remove the horrible sticky feel and leave plastic coating underneath. It does make it slightly cloudy as Meths is quite strong but it's a small price to pay to have a permanently non-sticky peripheral!