White residue after cleaning drip tips

[TypeOholic]

Hello all. I recently cleaned my drip tips by boiling them and then rinsing them with 91% alcohol. Once dry there is a white residue on the inside and bottom edges of the drip tips. It almost seems like lime scale buildup like sometimes happens on the inside of a coffee pot. It does come off with a lot of work. It can be scraped off but on plastic drip tips that is a problem. Seems like I need something that will dissolve it but not mess up the plastic.

If anyone has any experience with this or suggestions on how to safely clean the drip tips please feel free to post.

Thanks

 

[six]

Boiling colored delrin plastics leaches the color out of them. Delrin is natively white-ish before they add pigment to the process. The elbow grease required to get back to the color is you actually taking the leached layer off.

Boiling plastics can make them start to break down. You should clean delrin, plastic, and acrylic drip tips with alcohol.

Hope that helps! -- The only reason I know about this is because I did the same thing and then did a bunch of reading about delrin and acrylic

 

[TypeOholic]

That makes sense. But why is the white only on the inside and bottom edges where the most juice buildup would be? Does juice break it down as well? The outside of the tips is still perfect. I was thinking it was cooked juice or juice that had reacted with the alcohol or something like that. Do you think I can clean them or should I just get new ones?

 

[six]

All plastics have different degrees of porousness. I think that they tend to absorb things that don't evaporate (PG, VG, Oils, or other things they come in contact with).

I never worried too much about the little bit of discoloration on the drip tips I boiled. I used them anyway.

 

[TypeOholic]

Yeah, I will still use them. I'm not concerned with their safety or anything like that. They just look cloudy which defeats the point of transparent drip tips. Thanks for the quick responses.