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I'm trying to refurbish a second hand +3 year old monitor speakers and noticed that there are lots of white spots / dots growing out from the rubber wrap on the speaker's inside cable & component. It feels rough to touch, and this white spots appear to only appear on specific components' shielding & cable wrap that seems to be made by the same rubber material.

The speaker works fine, but should I be concerned that this will affect other components in the future? Should I try to clean in by sanding it lightly?

Could this simply be a manufacturing defect on the rubber wrap or are there something else going on inside with my speaker unit?

spots marked with red arrow

Envinite
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  • Strange, but I don’t see why it would invalidate the isolation properties. – winny Apr 14 '18 at 21:59
  • Weird, but it should still work as it's supposed to... – skillz21 Apr 15 '18 at 01:06
  • Particularly odd that it's showing up in multiple areas that presumably are made of slightly dissimilar materials. Especially those inductors (L5). Would be worth a very thorough look for moisture damage (or a super weird case of a leaky electrolytic cap?). Overall though, if it's just surface stuff I wouldn't be too concerned. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. – Phil C Apr 15 '18 at 01:33

1 Answers1

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I have encountered similar occurrences in the past, and it turned out to be a breakdown of the plasticizer in the material.

If the residue was on other components, I would suspect it was fungus forming. But since it appears to be only on the heat shrink tubing, I believe it's a chemical instability in that one material. This usually takes a few years for the residue to become visible.

AlmostDone
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