Broken plastic?

… hopefully …

Photo of the week

Extreme refurbishing series 😉

Fixing stuff

This post is about fixing plastic cases of retro computers. Well, maybe it is rather how I fix it.
Of course, this method applies to other equipment as well.

The target for today is a severely damaged C64 Breadbin case followed by an example fix of an Amiga 500 case destroyed in transit.

Here is the first patient.

C64 Breadbin

First of all, plastic has to be washed thoroughly.
Washing was kinda mandatory, especially this time because this “used to be a c64 case” was covered with various crap that I won’t even mention here 😀

The idea is to use a standard soldering iron to fix broken parts.
IMO, It is way better than glue because glues introduce different chemicals and that is nearly always a worse option resulting in a weaker joint.

To get a proper joint, a certain method has to be applied.
The soldering iron tip has to be sunk quite deep. Next, as quickly as possible, the bulges created while sinking has to be moved back into a cavity. I’ve no idea if it makes sense, but no worries, I have a video of that process.
Let me show you some pictures first.

In this particular case, joints are quite dirty. That is simply because I didn’t clean a soldering tip properly. Also, lowering the temperature helps a bit 😛
I didn’t care because I already knew that I will be spray painting it.

Below is a video of how this process looks in real time.