PM 8500 (small rant on plastic)

[unity]

I acquired an 8500/120 with 160MB RAM on my last conquest. Its not a bad machine but what is up with the plastic on this thing? Normally the BFRs seem to be UV "extracted" causing yellowing more on exposed ares and less under labels and such. But this thing is smokers yellow inside and out. The only part that is not is the main frame assembly. I was surprised the motherboard frame was so yellow too. Its not exposed at all! The other thing that seemed odd to me was hot brittle the plastic is! I lost two drive door faceplates by barely touching the thing. I thought I had new replacements, but not one for the CD drive. At first I thought maybe they were damaged previously but then the horribly designed power button/LED holder disintegrated in my hand. Guess I am booting only from the keyboard now.

Is this normal? I've never run into plastic being so brittle on a Mac before.

 

[Byrd]

The 8x0 and 8xx0 casing has always been horrible - I don't think I've seen one without a broken CD bezel, or badly yellowed/brittle plastics. The same "horrible" vein runs through to taking it apart and upgrading components inside the case. Not one of Apple's finest, although the 840AV/8100 were amazingly powerful machines in their time.

 

[techknight]

spindlerplastic....

 

[dougg3]

I'm interested in figuring out ways to maybe create replicas of these brittle plastic parts. I recently was able to obtain a brand new tray loading CD bezel for the 8xx/8xxx series (my original's tabs broke), but I'm too afraid to put it onto my 840av because it will just break too.

Could it be used as a mold to make new ones? I'm just not an expert on this stuff. Could a mold be made from one, or would it make more sense to use it to somehow have it 3D scanned into a CAD model, or what? It's a shame to see the plastic breaking on these otherwise awesome machines. I wish there was a way we could make aftermarket parts for these things kind of like what you can find for classic cars.

It's probably prohibitively expensive to do it, just wondering if anyone has more experience with this stuff. I don't think the typical extruder 3D printers would have nearly enough resolution to print a decent replica.

 

[techknight]

These days, its easier to do a 3D scanning of it, refine the details and then powder print a copy of it.

How do we do that? I have no idea... LOL.

 

[Brooklyn]

It is prohibitively expensive unless you could sell a large quantity (500+) but I could probably create a solid model pretty easily.

A 3D printed part is actually a good option, you just sand and paint afterwards, it will turn out nice, but color matching will be a challenge.

 

[mcdermd]

Texture matching too.