14 Jul
2009
14 Jul
'09
1:06 p.m.
On 7/14/09, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
...those dumb little black brackets that blank rack
covers in place, the
ones that the little nubs break off of? Grrr. I'd love to find a forgotten
case of those things.
Oh, yeah. I've got a pile of broken ones in a box in storage (most of
the "good" ones are bolted to the face of various racks).
If the plastic is amenable to (solvent) welding, it might make sense
to turn some replacement stalks on a lathe or to mold them, then drill
out the broken plate and weld the fabricated part in the hole. I'm
guessing that the parts are either polystyrene or ABS, both of which
have solvents. I wouldn't expect just gluing the broken bits back on
would work because of lack of mechanical at the break.
Perhaps I'd feel differently after making a few things in a RepRap,
but the layered construction technique might not be the best method
for manufacturing these sorts of brackets since the stress happens
(usually) when you want to remove the blank cover from the rack, and
this would apply the stress between layers of the printed replacement
part.
Finding a couple of cases of NOS in a warehouse would be great, but I
have to think if it was going to happen, it would have happened in the
past 10-20 years.
-ethan