I am somewhat careful (I never apply excessive force), however I don’t baby it either and I am yet to scrape off any Cooling-Unit plastic (no visible scratch marks either).
I use a “Happy Daddy Grindson” tool to scrape up my reclaim from the cooling unit (See photos below) it’s not sharp but it’s still got an edge.
I just heat up my CU with a hair dryer, to make it easy to open and it also makes the reclaim VERY easy to scoop up when it’s warm.
If you don’t have a hair dryer, I have also set my crafty to max temp and sucked with nothing in the bowl, so the hot air convection does the same thing, but I’ve gotten slightly intoxicated by doing that in the past lol.
Then I scrape out the reclaim and apply it to a liquid pad (that came with the crafty) and use it in the bowl again.
Although I have heard of people using anything, toothpicks, dab tools, my friend uses a bent piece of wire. But I’m glad I got my tool.. makes it pretty easy (in conjuction with hair dryer to soften it).
After I have done this I ISO bath the CU and get a second ISO reclaim after ~5 or so washes.
NOTE: I suggest using the fine screen in your cooling unit if you intend to do this scoop method. I tried with the coarse screen and I had chunks in my reclaim! Sorta gross and I think it affected the flavor, a fine screen minimizes this.