Chapter four: Don't sniff the glue

The only thing left are the two broken parts of plastic I mentioned going into this project: The broken of arm of the transparent flap on the front and the plastic piece behind the front panel.

The scuffs and scratches will remain for now. The silver part of the shell is painted black plastic so I would need to sand and re-paint it to get it up to snuff, which I don't wanna do. The transparent part at the top could probably be sanded and polished to get rid of the blemishes, but I also don't want to do that either. Maybe in the future. For now I'll only fix the two big an visible issues.

I'll tackle the broken plastic piece behind the front panel first. It's not really visible because the flap goes in front of it when opening the record player. When it's closed it's hidden behind the front panel. So the fix doesn't have to be perfect.

First I tried to glue it back on without removing the front panel, but that proved impossible (at least for me). So I undid the three screws that held it in place and flipped it up and out of the way.

Then I just used some super glue to put the broken off part back on. I probably got more glue on my fingers than on the parts but it was enough to get it to stick together. Again, It doesn't need to be pretty because it'll be covered up anyway.

A photo of the plastic area behind the control panel. On the bottom right side is a pice missing.

A photo displaying the same are as the previous one, this time with the missing piece glued in place.

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Now it was time to repair the flap. The part behind the screw hole has broken off. Now when the metal arms on either side want to lift or lower the flap it get stuck on the left side while the right side gets lifted up.

A photo of the left-hand side of the front flap inside the record player with part of it broken of.

A photo of the right-hand side of the front flap inside the record player fully intact.

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To fix this I designed and 3D printed a cutting template to evenly cut off some of the broken part below the screw hole. After that I could glue on another 3D printed part that replaced the piece that was cut off. I used some masking tape to protect the surrounding plastic from getting damaged. For some reason I didn't take a picture of the finished cut.

After cutting the broken parts away I could glue the replacement part on with some more super glue.

A photo of the flap with a black plastic piece surrounding the bottom part of the broken off bit.

The same photo as before, but now everything except the part above the plastic piece is covered in yellow painters tape.

A photo of the replacement part being glued in place from one angle.

A photo of the replacement part being glued in place from another angle.

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After letting the glue dry I could mount the flap back onto the record player.

// The original Blog-Post has a video here. Here's the alt-text instead: A low-resolution video where the tray moves out towards the front and the flap lowers away behind it and then moves back inside the record player while the flap moves up. //

// I probably shouldn't have filmed this on the Mavica. //

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After making sure everything still works, I put some new white silicone grease on the cogs and wheels that move the tray and the arm and screwed it all together. For the bottom I used some fitting M3 screws I hat sitting around because I didn't want to put the partly stripped brass screws back. I ordered proper new brass screws, but they haven't turned up before I finished the repair.

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