The plastic latch broke off - how to seal it?
By accident, I broke off the plastic latch on the lid of the washing machine. In appearance, it looks like a hook that fixed the lid and prevented it from opening. If any of you have encountered similar repairs before, you are well aware that you can’t just seal it with superglue - it will come right back off. Therefore, we need another way out, which I came up with.
By the way, my task is more difficult, since the latch did not just break into two parts, but shattered into three: in the middle between the parts, the middle piece about 1 mm thick flew off. Of course, I didn’t find it, but it doesn’t matter, we can do without it.
Will need
All you need to restore the latch:
- Superglue of any brand.
- Baking soda.
- A few staples from a stapler.
Tools: soldering iron, tweezers.
How to seal a latch
The first step is to put the pieces together. To do this, glue them to each other with superglue.
The photographs clearly show that a piece is missing from the side.
We wait 15-20 minutes for the glue to dry. Next, we move on to reinforcing the parts, namely strengthening them with metal staples from a stapler. Using a soldering iron, solder the bracket on one side.To avoid getting burned, we hold it during the procedure with tweezers.
Then a second staple on the other side.
Then a third from the opposite side.
We fuse the brackets flush. The connection is well reinforced. Now it's time to fill the gap. Pour a couple of drops of super glue into it and immediately sprinkle it with soda very generously, heapingly. Immediately press with your finger on this slide so that the soda is pressed as much as possible into the center.
Everything dries instantly, with noticeable heating. Next, we again drip super glue onto this place and again pour in soda - on top we get a kind of pile of frozen substance. It will not interfere with the operation of the unit, and if it does, it can be filed off.
That's all. The latch will no longer come off. I've been using the machine for two weeks now - everything is great.
In general, when soda reacts with superglue, the composition simply turns into stone, I really regret that I didn’t know this before (I saw the idea here - https://home.washerhouse.com/en/4451-kak-skleit-plastik-nadezhno.html).
Friends, if any of you have previously encountered the problem of sealing especially critical plastic components, please share your experience in the comments, I think everyone will be very interested.
