I have had the most success with Q-tips and time. 91% alcohol if needed. Also I have found that if the Q-tip gets any bit dirty or loose (starting to separate) then it is time to rotate the tip or switch it out. Depending what I am working on I will use the other end. But you go though a ton of Q-tips. Good thing they are only like 3 bucks for a box of 500.

Some examples of my work with cleaning and new additions.

 

How did the soaking work out? After a near-disaster with Shockwave, I'm very nervous about coarse methods of paint removal.
Specifically for the legs (and other parts, I imagine), how much of the underlying color (i.e. the color underneath the battle damage) is paint vs. colored plastic?
I started scrubbing away with the q-tip method on Soundwave's legs, and the q-tips were coming back black very quickly. I stopped and became concerned that I was wearing away black paint on the shins. So are the shins blue plastic painted black or black plastic?

 

Painted black. Unfortunately, most of the apps on the Voyagers are applied on top of others. Hasbro doesn't want you removing it so you'll buy the 35th line, basically. lolololol

No, seriously, the paint apps are sitting on top of other ones. Soundwave's the worst because his apps are rather complex by comparison and if you take off the battle damage, you take off the rest. Starscream's shins are the same way.

 

learning from experience before you do any paint removal, you need to check to see what the original plastic color is. This is most important for clear because clear plastic doesn't like most things apparently. Less important but still important is you may end up removing the color you want from your figure unaware that its really paint and not plastic. For example your case of finding out soundwave is painted. Always closely examine the piece outside and if possible inside. The inside of plastic doesn't usually get sprayed so its easier to tell from the inside what the true color of the plastic is. this way u don't ruin the figure or existing paint job.

 

Not very well. I bought some 99% and soaked it for days. I had already got most but the paint in the grooves were tough. The soaking maybe got a few more marks but left what you see below. I just had to call it done at that point. This was the worst figure in Siege to get the battle damage off of. I canceled my Red Alert pre-order after that. I may rethink that but I really don't want to mess with removing this crap any more.

As pointed out the legs are blue plastic with paint apps and battle damage paint on top of them. I had to repaint some areas.

 

Geeeeez... Okay, so I'm definitely going to stop before I make things worse. So would you say that it would just be easier to paint over the battle damage in the first place? Or is there a surface texture/priming problem there? Now that you've been through the hell of trying to remove the battle damage, how would you recommend addressing it?

 

I have a question about Starscream, what can be removed without taking the colors off, like for example, is his chest piece red plastic that I can remove the damage from? The blue on his legs is probably paint, so I can't remove it from there.... is that right?

 

To be honest I'm not sure. If your skilled enough and can match the paint then maybe painting over it is best. If not then maybe just try a little each day until hopefully it comes off? Maybe someone here has a better way to remove it. To be honest I removed the damage from Prime, Megatron, and Ultra Magnus with a little work but Sideswipes mid section was hard and I had to soak it. Soundwave was just awful.

 

How can you remove the scrapes of soundwaves chest without alcohol, I don't want to fog up the chest piece.

 

I soaked Starscream's arm in 99% rubbing alcohol for a few hours. Not only did it not remove the paint it caused a very minute part of the arm to crumble off and become discoloured :-(

 

I really wish I'd stopped just lurking in Radicons and read this thread before making "repaint Prowl into Diaclone Bluestreak" my first custom project in like ten years.

Any suggestions for removing the paint from the clear bits without having it all fall to pieces? The 91% Isopropyl soak went poorly and I've got a new Prowl on the way.

 

Actually it removed pretty quickly on mine with the 91% alcohol.
The figure that is giving me fits is Soundwave. No matter how much i go over it, the paint just wont come off. Already i had to repaint the black area on his shins because of dripping alcohol that removed the black paint BUT NOT THE SILVER "BATTLE DAMAGE!!

 

I tried 70% isopropyl alcohol, didn't work. A $2 imitation magic sponge didn't work either, but I did notice that the sponge was starting to 'dull' the clear plastic after some prolonged (20 minutes) albeit gentle wet scrubbing.

Finally, I just lost patience and used a bottle of 'gentle' nail polish remover (acetone). It did not state the concentration. The acetone managed to 'dislodge' the paint into smearing, thereafter I used the imitation magic sponge to scrub it off. Whole process took about 10 minutes. The clear plastic isn't perfectly clear anymore, but it's still mostly translucent. Good enough for me, as I couldn't stand the battle damage. Oh, and I added a bit of amateur paint to the front of the shoulders and knee caps.

 

Keep an eye on that... Acetone and plastic NEVER mix. Always use alcohol. As for Soundwave, one person had luck with their fingernail just scraping off the battle damage.

 

I removed the cracks on soundwave's chest with a push pin tip, by gently scrapping them off. I moved in small circular motions, starting with minimal force, and gradually increased the amount of force whenever the crack paint apps weren't going away.

 

How did you remove Soundwave's cracks?

 

Lots of time and q-tips. 91% alcohol. Pop on a show and start rubbing. Took me about an hour or 2 to get it done.

 

Just got Starscream. Has anyone successfully cleaned off his wings? My first, tentative stab at it did not seem very hopeful.
1 q-tip, 91% alc, vigorous scrubbing at a single large spot on his right wing for a few minutes and not a single fleck or mote of paint came off.

After reading about the crumbling plastic in an earlier post, I'm not about to soak him.

What say you all? Does Screamer clean up?

 

Anyone tried this with springer?

 

It took a couple passes but for the most part I was able to remove the paint from his wings with the 91% alcohol. Only where paint got in-between the detail panels I was unable to remove completely.